Homelessness 'can happen to anybody. Until it happens, you are clueless'

Helen McInerney, 54, in the bedroom she has been staying at in the Novas temporary emergency homeless shelter, Limerick, for the past six months, after she became homeless when her landlord sold her home. Pictures: David Raleigh

Helen McInerney didn’t abuse drink or drugs, and she always paid her bills, but now she sleeps in a homeless shelter, alone, after her landlord sold her rented family home on the private market.

Her sudden plunge into homelessness split her from her daughter and her grandchildren, who are in separate emergency homeless shelters, and has been “horrible” and “heartbreaking”.