9,000 face being homeless by end of the year
After 16 years of homelessness, she has now been housed and, in August, the grandmother went to Oslo to represent Ireland on the women’s football team at the Homeless World Cup.
“I was sleeping rough on the streets, I wasn’t well at all. I was a drug addict and an alcoholic,” she said.
“In December 2013, I had given up. I just woke up one morning down on Store St and that was the start of my journey in recovery. I went through cold turkey.
“In February 2014, I entered into Dublin Simon Community’s detox through a key worker. I was still sleeping rough.”
She was speaking yesterday at the launch of the Dublin Simon Community’s impact report and said she had accepted her life as it was, never imaging she could ever recover.
“I was defiant to the core and I didn’t think I could enter into a recovery programme. At this stage [February 2013], I had been three months off drugs. But I did enter into recovery and it’s the best thing I ever did,” said Tara.
After enduring cold turkey and engaging with the charity’s homeless and addiction services, Tara found her way back to herself through her first love — sport.
“I always loved sport and I played sport right through my childhood and teens and up until I was 18 I was on an FAI course. Then I became pregnant and I had to pull out of that. Then addiction took over, so I never got back into it until I came to Dublin Simon and got into the gym and started doing little runs with them and playing football.
“I felt free — I was myself when I was out on the pitch, I could forget things for that little while,” she said.
Tara was housed last year and, after years of having “no sense of belonging”, was greeted at her home with “banners and everything” on her return from Norway.
Tara is heavily involved in Ireland’s first homeless gym, run by Dublin Simon Community, and it is here she found a deep sense of belonging as well as a place she could renew her social skills after years of living without a home.
“I built up little skills to be a member of society. Even now I suppose I struggle with my social skills at times but I try to push through them,” she said.
At the Dublin Simon Community’s impact report launch yesterday, its CEO Sam McGuinness warned there will be 9,000 people homeless in Ireland by the end of 2018 and that there is a severe lack of health funding to meet these people’s needs.
“Homeless numbers after 2004 went up significantly,” he said. “The numbers in 2004 were 4,000 people, approximately, homeless nationally.
“Well, that’s now 8,000 people and if you follow that graph right the way up that looks like now that could reach 9,000 before the end of the year because there are no plans presently except the hard work that’s being done.”
In 2008, there were 1,394 homeless people nationally and the health funding for homeless services was €36.1m.
However, in spite of the rise in homeless numbers, health funding stands at €32.6m. While the level of homelessness has risen by 485% in that time, there has been a 10% fall-off in health funding.
Separate to the health funding shortfall, Mr McGuinness said cities need to see more construction of homes.
