People Before Profit will hold a socially distanced protest at Sandy Road this Saturday at 2pm, demanding that the public land there be used to construct public housing.
PBP Galway is concerned that the Land Development Agency may sell the lands at Sandy Row - currently owned by the Galway city and county councils - to a private developer, and an opportunity to build affordable and social accommodation will be lost.
The effects of the housing crisis in Galway are stark. Some 4,500 people are on the waiting list for council housing in Galway city, and the average one-bedroom apartment costs 64 per cent of the minimum wage. There was a 9.5 per cent increase in people accessing emergency homeless accommodation in Galway in the first three months of this year.
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"The Land Development Agency corrodes the already weak powers of local government by forcing through sales of public land over the heads of local councillors, denying them the opportunity to vote against these decisions,” said PBP Galway representative, Adrian Curran [pictured above].
Furthermore, The Sunday Business Post reported last weekend that the number of short term lets in Galway is 10 times larger than the number of long-term rental units.
“The establishment which caused this housing crisis is never going to solve it,” said Mr Curran. “If we are to see an end to this housing emergency, we need all the people and communities who are affected by it to build a mass protest movement like the one which won on water charges.
“We need to demand public housing on the Sandy Road site, as well as the other tracts of public land at Dyke Road, Ceannt Station, and Nuns Island which are also due to be redeveloped.”
