Call out for guest posts!

Write a guest post for The Week in Housing in 2024

Happy New Year! This first Newsletter of 2024 is a little bit different as it is a call out for guest contributors to the Week in Housing. Regular readers will know we have had some fantastic guest posts on here over the last two years, including this one on cost rental housing by Fiona Dunkin of Clúid Housing, this one on the Tathony house mass eviction by Councilor Madeleine Johansson, and this two-parter on the North’s rental sector by Renter’s Voice. Some contributors have used guest posts to share their research and policy work, like this piece by Rob Sweeney of TASC, this one by Joe Kilroy of the Chartered Institute of Building, and this recent one by Pierce Daly of the ECB.

Perhaps you want to highlight something that is missing from the current debate? Or to highlight some new research, policy work or campaigning your organization is doing? Perhaps you want to write about housing policy or politics in another country which could be of interest here? Or have a critique of some aspect of policy, or indeed research methodologies, in the housing sector?

Over the next year, I would like to feature more guest posts to use this platform for knowledge exchange and debate around housing in Ireland and internationally. The Week in Housing now has over 750 subscribers. Most importantly, the majority of subscribers work directly in some area of housing. Many staff in the AHBs and homeless services subscribe, as to staff at the Housing Agency, Government Departments, Local Government, the RTB and other relevant bodies. In addition, many members of the Oireachtas subscribe, as well as journalists and housing researchers and activists.

In short, if you have something you want to communicate to Ireland’s housing scene there are few better avenues than this Newsletter.

The type of writing I hope to publish will be similar to the guest posts mentioned above, i.e.

• Of interest to those involved in housing in Ireland and internationally

• Informative, with a focus on evidence and analysis

• Not overly polemical: I try to ensure that this newsletter is of value to readers irrespective of their political perspective

• Finally, The Week in Housing is aimed at people who work in, or have a particular interest in, housing, and therefore the writing should assume significant knowledge on the part of the reader and focus on more nuanced, technical or complex aspects of housing than would feature, for example, in media discussions (again the guest posts linked above are a good indicator).

If you have something you would like to write about please get in touch (michael.byrne@ucd.ie) with a short ‘pitch’ or abstract, i.e. a paragraph on what you want to write about. If it is something suitable we can then agree a publication date for the piece, which will receive some minor editing from me (subject to your approval of course).

Thanks and hoping to hear from you 2024!