A shocking home truth Kevin Hargaden addresses the truth about the issue of homelessness in Ireland, and introduces a new resource designed to help churches tackle the problem.
I
spoke recently with a woman who has been homeless for four years. She was running a successful little restaurant when she was the victim of fraud. Although she was victorious in a legal battle, the criminal had no funds available to compensate her. The loss of the initial crime and the costs that then incurred were greater than her income. The business closed. She could no longer pay rent. She went from thriving and contributing to the economy to homeless in a matter of months. Her husband sought respite in drink and gambling and he is now gone from the home. He had become abusive before leaving her alone to care for their son who has severe asthma. They have lived in five different towns over the last four years as they are moved from short-
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Herald April 2020
term accommodation, to hotel, to B&B, perpetually at the mercy of a bureaucracy that sees her tiny, struggling family as nothing but an entry in a database, a case file to be processed. In her present accommodation, the hotel room is over an hour from her boy’s school by bus. It is a room barely fit for human habitation, obviously neglected for many years by its owners who do not need to invest in their business, since the
‌the current housing and homelessness crisis in Ireland is more severe than at any time since the Great Famine.
homelessness crisis basically grants them a blank cheque from the Department of Housing every month. She is not allowed to be inside her room from 8am in the morning until 5pm in the evening, so after dropping her child to school, she wanders the streets. There are certain fast food restaurants where she knows she’ll be allowed to shelter for hours in exchange for buying a cup of coffee. In two of the residences she has been placed in, she was sexually harassed by staff members who know how vulnerable she is. When she called an ambulance in the middle of the night when her son suffered a particularly devastating asthma attack, she was threatened with eviction for breaking the curfew imposed in that particular hotel. After 11pm she was not meant to leave her room, you see.
