‘The Holylands’, but for who? – Stormont Can’t Deliver

The media carousel annually spits out reports of drunken student debauchery and bitter, old, resident grudges in an effort to ascertain who is truly at fault for the unholy issue that is ‘the holylands’.

It’s difficult to uncover the answer of what came first, the chicken or the egg. Did an influx of students turn the area into a neglected slum, or did the slum emerge and the only group willing to occupy it were students?

What is easier to answer is who profits from keeping ‘the lands’ the way they are – LANDLORDS!

On who first caused what is ultimately of little relevance now, what matters most is who maintains the descent of the Holylands into Belfast most infamous rental slum?

It certainly isn’t the long-term residents witnessing the decay of buildings around their homes and having to deal with the anti-social behaviour that comes with adject poverty. Nor is it the student residents who benefit from living in extortionately priced, delapitated housing that threatens their physical and mental health.

The culprits are the landlords who profit from charging high rents for unregistered, unmaintained properties, from illegal letting fees, deposit theft & corruption.

Guilty too are the politicians who string along residents with promises of a never-coming solution. Who continue to draw the battle lines between student and resident, but blur the line between local politician and landlord.

There is only one fight. The fight of residents (and students are residents) against landlords, and it will only be when residents have the power that the question will be solved.

A holyland for the renters and residents, not the BCSA’s, the M&Ms, or the Declan Boyles.

When it comes to access to fair housing, absent of the control of those who seek to speculate and profit, it is clear that Stormont Can’t Deliver!