Family of 4 forced to sleep in car as emergency accommodation is unavailable

A Tallaght family has been reduced to sleeping in their car as they are unable to get emergency accommodation.

Sabrina McMahon and her three children moved from Athy two years ago to be closer to her extended family after her council house was broken into.

Fighting back tears, Sabrina says: “I really can’t take any more. All the children want is a back garden where they can play. I’m in a friend’s house getting the children’s bottles ready for tonight.”

Originally from Tallaght, Sabrina had been living in Athy for nine years. “I was living in a council house but junkies broke in and destroyed it,” she says. “I didn’t feel safe there. I decided to go back to Tallaght with the kids.”

For the last two years, Sabrina has been staying with her mother in Cushlawn Park in Tallaght and in friends’ homes, moving from house to house.

Things have recently reached breaking point and she has been forced to sleep with her children in her car.

Sabrina says: “I have our suitcases in the car. We have been moving from house to house. Nobody could put us up anymore. They just won’t have us. My partner walked out two years ago”

Sabrina says no landlord will accept rent allowance.

Yesterday, she went to South Dublin County Council’s homeless unit and got more bad news. “They told me I am a month out of qualifying for accommodation in the county and I can’t get emergency accommodation for another month,” she says.

Sabrina has a 5-year-old boy, Karl, and two girls, Michael, 3, and, Chelsea, 2.

“The council just told me to go back to Kildare,” she says. “Kildare County Council told me that if I want to get on the homeless list there I have to come off the homeless list here.

“Why would I want to do that? South Dublin have said that I will qualify in a month.”

She says that it has been a very hard experience on her children. “They don’t know if they are coming or going,” she says. “All the kids want is a back garden to play in.”

A spokesperson for South Dublin County Council was not available for comment.

Sinn Féin councillor Máire Devine said Sabrina’s plight is symptomatic of a much wider problem.

“This is not an isolated incident,” says Ms Devine. “It is becoming far more common. The homeless figures do not belie what is really happening. It all ties in together.

“It is not just people on social welfare. People who are working on low incomes and who are on JobBridge schemes or internships are affected too.

“There is less people with money in their pockets. There is talk about an upturn in the economy. If there is an upturn in the economy, I would like to see it.”