{"id":491181,"date":"2022-01-30T17:08:54","date_gmt":"2022-01-30T17:08:54","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.thecanary.co\/?p=1548860"},"modified":"2022-01-30T17:08:54","modified_gmt":"2022-01-30T17:08:54","slug":"this-vulture-capitalist-property-company-is-forcibly-evicting-long-standing-tenants","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/2022\/01\/30\/this-vulture-capitalist-property-company-is-forcibly-evicting-long-standing-tenants\/","title":{"rendered":"This vulture capitalist property company is forcibly evicting long-standing tenants"},"content":{"rendered":"
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\u201cHomes for people – Not for profit\u201d and \u201cVulture funds \u2013 Out now\u201d came the chants at the street protest organised by Irish MP Richard Boyd Barrett<\/a> . Barrett is from socialist party People Before Profit<\/a>. He organised<\/a> the protest in support of the people of St Helen\u2019s Court in D\u00fan Laoghaire, in the south of Dublin. Since 2016, vulture capitalists have been trying to evict<\/a> this community from their homes. Some people have lived here since 2009.<\/p>\n

The Canary<\/em> went to the protest on Saturday 29 January and spoke to the tenants. They face a serious threat of eviction and possible homelessness. According<\/a> to campaigners:<\/p>\n

It is crunch time for the tenants in St Helen\u2019s Court<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

That’s because their vulture capitalist landlord is taking this community to court on 4 February to force them out of their homes.<\/p>\n

What is a vulture capitalist?<\/h5>\n

Vulture capitalists<\/a> \u201cswoop in\u201d and buy failing companies<\/a> at a fraction of their previous value. Then they do whatever is necessary to sell that company on for a profit. They may also decide to hold onto the company while making job cuts or selling off company assets.<\/p>\n

Given that vulture capitalists can, according<\/a> to author and professor David Whyte, thrive at the expense of others, a more appropriate term might be ‘parasites’.<\/p>\n

Campaigners in D\u00fan Laoghaire say<\/a>:<\/p>\n

The vulture fund has no reason for evicting them other than greed to increase the value of the property.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Moreover, in the midst of a housing<\/a> crisis in Ireland where homelessness increased in 2021:<\/p>\n

There are now about 15 perfectly good apartments sitting empty in the complex [St Helen\u2019s Court] for up to two years, which could be used to house people.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Due to this housing crisis, even if the people facing eviction from St Helen’s wanted to leave the community they’ve been living in for over a decade, many of them couldn\u2019t:<\/p>\n

The tenants have made every effort to get alternative accommodation but with sky-high rents in the area and the years-long social housing lists, they have nowhere to go.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

The current owner<\/a> of this property is Mill Street Projects Limited with an address in County Donegal. Its director is Paul Gavin Martin. One of the shareholders in this company is another company called Victoria Property Holdings Limited. This shareholder has an address just 4 and a half miles away in County Derry, which is across the border in the north of Ireland.<\/p>\n

Paul Gavin Martin is also a company officer<\/a> of Victoria Property Holdings. And the other directors of the company (Michael Gerrard Martin and Gary Michael Martin) own substantial property<\/a> portfolios<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\"\"
(L-R) BACKGROUND – Richard Barrett TD (with mic in hand). FOREGROUND – Radoslaw Czuchaj, Sean Mitchell & Tony Geraghty<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
What do they want with this property?<\/h5>\n

According to Barrett, the owner of this property is inspired purely by profit motives. He told The Canary<\/em> that a representative of the vulture fund said at a property dispute hearing:<\/p>\n

it\u2019s not pleasant… it\u2019s ugly, but we have to maximise the value of our client\u2019s investment<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

He added that if this company manages to evict the tenants, it can then \u201cdrive up the value of the property and the rents that they can charge\u201d. So Barrett wants the government to take over this site using a compulsory purchase order.<\/a> Moreover, he wants the government to prevent the evictions and house people who \u201cdesperately need housing\u201d in the vacant properties in St Helen’s.<\/p>\n

Tenants Radoslaw Czuchaj, Sean Mitchell and Tony Geraghty spoke to The Canary<\/em>. They said an eviction on 4 February would mean \u201cwe may only have two weeks\u201d to find alternative accommodation. And that would be incredibly difficult for these men. They say they can\u2019t afford a new place because \u201cprices are crazy\u201d.<\/p>\n

Czuchaj has been living in this property since 2009 and Geraghty has been there for over ten years. Geraghty says he\u2019s 65, suffers from ill health, is in receipt of jobseeker’s allowance (welfare payment in Ireland), and can\u2019t find work. He says it\u2019s \u201cdesperately scary,\u201d because he doesn\u2019t have the funds to find a new place. All three men say they\u2019ve contacted the company but there\u2019s been no response. \u201cThey\u2019ve never responded back to us,\u201d says Czuchaj. Mitchell added that the vulture fund company didn\u2019t negotiate with them at any stage and just wanted the keys back. But he said:<\/p>\n

we\u2019re going to keep fighting them as much as we can<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Not confined to Ireland<\/h5>\n

Of course, the problem of vulture capitalism isn\u2019t confined to Ireland. Their \u201cpredatory investment practices\u201d have targeted<\/a> several countries in financial difficulty. And before coronavirus (Covid-19) had spread across the globe, they’d amassed<\/a> trillions of dollars in a \u201cwar chest\u201d waiting for their next opportunity to exploit.<\/p>\n

Companies such as Blackstone bought up<\/a> homes in the US as families couldn’t afford to pay their mortgages. Additionally, austerity policies by right-wing European governments meant cities like Madrid sold off their social housing for next to nothing to these giants. And in the midst of the pandemic, companies such as Axa and QuadReal Property spent more than \u00a31bn buying “more than 2,500 homes in the UK alone”.<\/p>\n

But there could be a way to tackle their exploitative behaviour. According to one collaborative report<\/a>, \u201cNew York State law has played a key role in enabling the vulture fund playbook\u201d. The vulture funds in turn have used this law to exploit countries in financial difficulty. And so, according to this report:<\/p>\n

New York is uniquely positioned to step in and pass laws that would disrupt the vulture fund playbook and stop them from profiteering at the expense of countries in financial trouble.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

A long way off? Maybe yes. But maybe not, if people stand in solidarity and put pressure where it matters.<\/p>\n

The Canary<\/em> contacted the property owners, the Department of Housing, Local Government and Heritage, and D\u00fan Laoghaire Rathdown County Council, but none of them responded by the time of publication.<\/p>\n

There is a fight back<\/h5>\n

Even if the objective of a vulture capitalist is to exploit misery for profit, the owners of these companies are people with names. They aren\u2019t machines or even a faceless organisation, as we now know in D\u00fan Laoghaire. This means they’re susceptible to pressure which can be brought to bear if people contact them and their elected representatives. When contacting them, people can express how angry they feel about companies profiting from the misery of others and about these companies potentially forcing homelessness. Maybe then a change in the law could happen.<\/p>\n

Barrett says the Irish government is failing to act on this, which means these vulture funds continue “to make profits from treating people in this way\u201d. But the campaign to save this community is strong, and fightback is underway. Following on from Saturday’s successful protest, campaigners are meeting outside the Bridewell Court in Dublin city centre at 1:45pm on Friday 4 February. They’re meeting to show their solidarity and are asking others to join them. Maybe then we can save this community in D\u00fan Laoghaire, as well as several others, from this needless eviction and greed.<\/p>\n

Featured image via The Canary & Pexels – Markus Spiske<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n

By Peadar O'Cearnaigh<\/a><\/p>\n\n

This post was originally published on The Canary<\/a>. <\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\u201cHomes for people \u2013 Not for profit\u201d and \u201cVulture funds \u2013 Out now\u201d came the chants at the street protest organised by Irish MP \u2026 <\/p>\n

Read more<\/a><\/div>\n

By Peadar O’Cearnaigh<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1542,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[30425,612,1628,365,15353,39184,8166],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/491181"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1542"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=491181"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/491181\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":502302,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/491181\/revisions\/502302"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=491181"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=491181"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=491181"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}