This is one vivid element of a housing crisis that combines the most contorted aspects of the private market with a rising need that continues to go unanswered. I have friends who live in log cabins.”Within minutes of arriving in Dublin, the urgency of Ireland’s housing crisis is highlighted by how often the issue crops up on the TV and radio. The first person I arrange to meet in Dublin is Rory Hearne, an academic who is at the heart of the swirl of politics and protest around the housing crisis. “While we’ve been heavily involved in demanding the use of public land for housing, Airbnb is compounding the crisis even more. As they see it, all this boils down to a depressingly familiar problem: the Irish establishment’s bedazzlement with the very same free market that caused the country’s housing crisis in the first place.

Source: The Guardian November 29, 2018 06:00 UTC