AN IRISH campaigner who helped mobilise 10,000 people onto the streets of Dublin over high rents and homelessness has revealed her plan to solve Scotland’s housing problems.
Aisling Hedderman, chair of the North Dublin Bay Housing Crisis Committee, became an activist after redundancy left her facing homelessness with her children.
She has since helped develop a community-led activist network, driven court battles against landlords and taken part in the mass Raise the Roof demonstration in October.
Tomorrow she will tell an audience in Glasgow of the similarities between the cities, and what could be done to help the residents of each.
Private sector rents in both have grown significantly in recent years, with wage changes failing to keep up while social provision falls short.
Meanwhile, homelessness remains a major issue, with pressure on authorities to provide for vulnerable families and individuals.
Both Glasgow City Council and the Scottish Government have unveiled plans aimed at helping people into permanent homes.
But, making her first visit to Glasgow, Hedderman told The National that visible homelessness in the country’s biggest city “just reminds me of home”.
Calling for a range of interventions, she went on: “There are so many different pressures. One of the biggest is that we don’t have housing as a human right in our constitution. If you had that, it would protect those without a home.
“We need to start building public housing on public land.”
Hedderman, who will join speakers at the Scottish Socialist Voice Forum, also advocates measures to link rental payments to income, introducing a new benefit scheme to ensure that households spend no more than 30% of what they bring in on accommodation bills.
She is also calling for an end to “economic evictions”, where mortgage lenders can turn out householders who have attempted to strike a new payment deal on arrears, and limits on property “hoarding” by
developers.
This, she says, leaves buildings empty and pushes up charges.
Hedderman said: “Provision is not human rights-based. We have to work together to bring fairness back into it.”
On the woman-led Rent Strikes that helped Glasgow communities change UK law in 1915, Hedderman commented: “People now feel they shouldn’t get involved in action because they might get into trouble. They are oppressed so much that they’re in fear.
“We have to remind people that they can stand together, and empower women to do that especially.”
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