Workers prepare to sleep 'on the street or in the airport' over Cork Jazz weekend

Young Spanish workers who came here, influenced by YouTubers, are afraid to tell family at home about their uncertain living situation.

Joaquin Acevedo, 26, from Chile; Pablo Alias, 28, from Spain; Alfonso Sanz, 23, from Spain; Rahal Fillal Kilch, 25, from Spain; Joan Rodriguez, 20, from Alicante; and Alba Figueroa Filgueira, 23, from Navarra, Spain.

A group of young immigrant workers who came to Cork to improve their English and find work are planning to sleep on the street or at Cork Airport over the weekend as they cannot afford a hostel bed, after finding it impossible to find a room to rent in the city.

Over the last month, six 20-somethings who left Spain for Ireland in the hope of “better wages and quality of life” have found each other in Sheila’s Hostel, and helped each other to survive sleeping in cars, on people’s floors, and bussing around the county to AirBnbs on busy weekends, when there are no beds to be found in the city.

Pablo Alias, 28, got scammed on arrival as he paid €800 for a room in a house where the existing tenants had already been told they’d be evicted in a month's time.

Alba Figueroa Filgueira, 23, from Navarra, Spain.

Alba Figueroa Filgueira, 23, ran away from a woman in the street as they went to view a room in Shandon, after being told she would be paying €600 a month to share the bedroom with an older man.

"Suddenly I didn’t know what I was about to walk into, I got scared, they hadn’t mentioned the man in the ad,” said Ms Filgueira.

Now that hostels are fully booked for the weekend, with prices at more than €100 a night due to the Cork Jazz Festival, most of the group have no idea where they will sleep.

Joaquin Acevedo, from Chile, came to Cork in September to learn English at a local college, where he paid €3,000 upfront for a six-month course, thinking that he could rent a room when he got here.

In the first month he spent over €1,000 on hostels and AirBnbs in Ballincollig and beyond.

No one warned him how hard it would be to find a room, and he has run out of money despite now working five days a week in a sandwich bar.

“Last night I slept on someone’s floor, tonight I’m sharing a room in the hostel that sleeps 14 people, we call it 'the barracks'," he said. 

This is not what I expected when I came to Ireland. At home, you can find a room to rent in any city within a few days.” 

European YouTubers who are touting Ireland, and specifically Cork, as the place to emigrate to have played a role in many of the group deciding to move here.

Joaquin Acevedo, 26, from Chile; Pablo Alias, 28, from Spain; Alfonso Sanz, 23, from Spain; Rahal Fillal Kilch, 25, from Spain; Joan Rodriguez, 20, from Alicante; and Alba Figueroa Filgueira, 23, from Navarra, Spain.

Alfonso Sanz, 23, is a qualified schoolteacher. He says he could work 60 hours a week in Spain and still not earn the average wage here.

“The crisis that you are having with housing, we are having with jobs," he said. 

"Many of us find work here quickly, but we cannot find anywhere to live.

We are lying to are families back home about how it is going here, we don’t want them to worry. 

"The more money you lose looking for a room here, the more determined you are trying to make it all worth it — you think if you wait one more week you will find something, and it becomes a nightmare.”

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Joan Rodriguez is only 20 years old. He came to Ireland after dropping out of a marketing degree in Spain in the hope that he could find a job here and eventually start studying again.

He says he was shocked to meet people here living in hostels long-term, rather than for travel.

“Some of the people I have shared rooms with have real issues, they are older and seem so sad," he said. 

"We have a basket where we keep our food in the kitchen and label it with the day we are due to leave, someone put bread there and wrote ‘one year’ on it. We’ve become friends with a family living here with their two-year-old.

We feel bad that we are competing with these people for rooms and beds, but we didn’t know it would be like this when we came, if we had known we wouldn’t have come at all.” 

In a statement, management at Sheila's Hostel told the Examiner: ''We do have some guests staying here while they are searching for longer-term accommodation. The hostel tends to get booked out well in advance for certain dates, and on those days people who have not previously made a reservation have to check out.

"Our prices have gone up somewhat due to rising operational costs. However, Sheila's is still the best option in Cork for budget accommodation."