Ireland will allow the homeless to vote, in particular to denounce the housing crisis in Europe

In Ireland, associations provide addresses to homeless people so that they can register to vote and vote. A way to put the subject of the housing crisis at the center of debate. Across Europe, the lack of housing and tourist rentals are putting residents on the street.

Like all other members of the European Union, Ireland is not immune to the housing crisis. The number of homeless people there has quadrupled in 10 years and until now, as in most European countries, they were prohibited from voting. In Ireland, for the first time, homeless people will be allowed to vote on June 7, 2024 in the European elections.

Until then, it was impossible for these homeless Irish people to make their voices heard. But everything changed in 2022, thanks to an electoral reform which allowed charities to provide them with an address. As in many countries, having an address is a “sine qua non” condition for being registered on an electoral list. Without an address, you are simply deprived of part of one of your fundamental rights as a citizen. Ireland has therefore righted this injustice, and the 20,000 homeless people in the country will be able to vote on June 7, 2024.

But when you sleep on the street or in a car, voting is far from being a priority. It is for this reason that, for months, support associations have been campaigning to encourage Irish homeless people to register on a list, like that of Mike Allen: “The mailbox system is perfect for this. They can enter their name at the address of a local mailbox. There they will receive everything they need, starting with their voter card to vote in the nearest office.”

This campaign to encourage voting does not only target the homeless. The associations also encourage the 70,000 people, mainly in Dublin, hosted in emergency housing or social housing. This approach aims to put the housing crisis at the center of the political debate, and to denounce the total lack of political response to what the Irish today consider to be the main emergency to be resolved.

This is the case in Dublin, the 3rd most expensive city in Europe. But the observation is the same in Brussels, Paris, Zagreb, Lisbon, Prague or Budapest, always for the same reasons: unaffordable rents, accommodation offered primarily to tourist agencies for short-term rentals, and a dizzying fall construction. On average, there are 25% fewer homes compared to last year, while nearly 900,000 people are now homeless and 19 million people are forced to live in unsanitary conditions within of the European Union.