Dying for a break

Bertie – where do u sleep?’ The banner, pasted to a barrier outside the Dail last week, was scrawled in an angry red. While the Taoiseach Bertie Ahern slept warmly in his house on Griffith Avenue, over 200 men, women and children slept without a roof over their heads, exposed to the worst the elements could throw at them, on the cold and wet streets of Dublin. Welcome to Ireland, in the year of the Lord, 2005.
In towns and cities across the country, increasing numbers of people are visible on the streets at night, covered by blankets and sleeping on cardboard shoved crudely into doorways, on benches and in whatever other places they can find. The statistics tell us that 5,581 people were homeless (sleeping rough or staying in emergency or insecure accommodation) in 2002, an increase of 3,000 on 1996. But behind those figures is a grim tale of deprivation, danger and neglect.
At a time of unprecedented wealth in Ireland, it seems incredible that so many people are left without the basic comfort and security of a roof over their heads. But that’s the way it is.
According to the UN’s Human Development Report, Ireland is now the second wealthiest country in the world. We lap up this shit and are all too good at clapping ourselves on the back for it. But we are also one of the most unequal countries, with the third highest level of poverty among the industrialised countries.
Nowhere is this poverty and inequality more evident than in the area of housing and homelessness.
“Our failure to eliminate homelessness, in this the second wealthiest country in the world, is nothing short of a scandal,” the veteran anti-homelessness campaigner Fr Peter McVerry said recently. “Homelessness and housing waiting lists both doubled during the Celtic Tiger years, when this country had more money than we knew what to do with. Giving some of it to the poor was not a choice that we were willing to make.”
In response to the increasing desperation of the situation, a number of protests have been organised recently, outside the Dail and in Dun Laoghaire. As one banner at the Dail read “the homeless are revolting".
In Dun Laoghaire, a young mother of three has been sleeping in a tent for the past month in protest outside the County Council offices. Antoinette Tate was made homeless when a private landlord evicted her and her family for being a few days late with her rent.
“I was in private rented for the last five years,” Antoinette Tate told me. “I was late with rent in the last property and the landlady told me to leave. I was on the internet, the papers – I rang over fifty places – but not one place would take three children and rent allowance. So I went to the council and they referred me to the homeless unit. I went and visited the temporary emergency accommodation they offered me – but it was filthy, with no heating, and totally unsuitable for children.
“I went back to the council and I got angry and told them that I am desperate and have nothing but they just told me to go away. I informed them I wasn’t leaving until I got somewhere to stay. They threatened to have social services take my children from me if I protested.”
Tate says that she has been on the housing waiting list for five years.
“All I was looking for was temporary suitable accommodation. I stood on me own outside the council offices with a placard the whole day. Then a friend of mine gave me the contact for the housing action campaign in Dun Laoghaire. I’ve been there now 27 days. I won’t stop until I get decent accommodation.”
She charges the council with neglect, not just of her, but more poignantly of her children.
“I think everyone deserves to be housed,” she says, “especially those with families – children should have a home, a stable environment. We are fucking our next generation up.
“My own health has deteriorated massively since being out on the streets. I have a pain in me back, a kidney infection and sometimes I get very tearful. The kids are affected. I am thinking of hunger strike – I’m so desperate and I miss my kids so much”.
Richard Boyd Barrett of the Dún Laoghaire Housing Action Group is trenchant in his criticism of the local council. “Antoinette’s case highlights the failure of public housing policy here,” he says. “The council and the government are happy to look after private developers but not the housing needs of ordinary people. We demand the council and government take emergency action to provide housing.”
If Antoinette Tate’s experience is heartbreaking, what then are we to say about the three people who died on Dublin streets two weeks ago? Two adults and a 17-year-old youth died within a 48-hour period. That the 17-year-old died as a result of a drug overdose in no way lessens the culpability of the authorities, who seem incapable of formulating even the bones of a plan to deal with homelessness.
Those sleeping on the streets are often portrayed as failures, as people who brought the situation upon themselves or as just plain lazy. However, when you listen to their stories, a very different picture emerges.
I spoke with two homeless guys, Johnny and Shane, at a sleep-out protest, organised by Street Scene, at the Dail on Kildare St. Talking to them, it became very clear that there are links between prison, poverty, homelessness, drugs and mental health.
Shane, who is 27, has been homeless since Christmas. “I’m from Tralee and I’ve been living in Dublin since I was 14,” he told me. “I was in care until I was 18 but then I was just left. I’ve been homeless on and off since then. I was a student in IT Tallaght, where I studied computer science. I was on heroin at 18 but I was clean for four years. I worked in the US and came back to Dublin to work in IBM. I was renting but then I got back into drugs. I wasn’t as bad then as I am now, but I’ve been trying to access treatment since April.
“I was in a hostel but lost my bed because of the drugs. I’m hitting a brick wall because it will be nearly a year before I gain treatment.”
Shane emphasises the individual nature of the difficulties that land people on the streets. “Everyone has their individual problems. People just brand us the same,” he says. “I was attacked on the street by people in suits. I was just sitting there tapping (begging) and people with suits came up and kicked me in the head. They treat us like dirt but no one knows me. They don’t know my story. I blame the Minister for Health, whoever is in charge of social housing and the top man, Bertie. I was tapping outside a posh hotel and he walked straight past me, he didn’t acknowledge I was there but just looked straight through me – he doesn’t give a shit.”
Johnny was also at the protest at the Dail. He is 25 and was renting for two years but his place was deemed unliveable by the council. He had to move and tried finding another place while going through the courts, fighting for custody of his daughter. He doesn’t do drugs but can’t read or write and feels the State has left him down.
“The Government don’t do anything for us,” he says. “They and the council are creating the problem. There is nothing there for the homeless. There is nothing else to turn to except drugs. You get sucked into drugs very easily and then spend your whole life trying to get out of it – it’s like a big black hole. This country is supposed to be so rich but I don’t see any of it coming our way.”
Accommodation in hostels is not the answer – certainly not the way it is currently organised.
“We get fucked out of hostels at 9am and there is nothing to do and nowhere to go,” Johnny says. “You get flu from walking around in the pissing rain. It will kill you – the flu.”
“There are a lot more deaths covered up,” Shane adds. “A lot of overdoses – a lot of them are homeless people but you never hear of them.”
They point out that there are more women with kids on the street these days than ever before and the statistics confirm it. The numbers of families with children who are homeless increased last year to 25% of all homeless. In 2004, in Dublin, 2,920 adults were homeless and the number of homeless children increased to 1,140. And is anything being done to tackle the problem? Not that anyone on the street can see.
The Government is to announce shortly that is to sell the former Veterinary College, a 2.1 acre site on Pembroke Road. It is likely to make over €100 million. Street Scene, organisers of the protest at the Dail are calling on Dublin City Council to pass an emergency motion calling on the Government to refrain from selling the site and instead to allocate it to Dublin City Council with a view to alleviating the housing crisis in the city.
Whatever the chances of that, action is urgently required if more deaths are to be avoided on the streets of Ireland.
Pics: Graham Keogh