Housing crisis: ‘All I ever wanted was a home for my family’
'It’s demoralising. You feel like an appalling parent'... This is the reality facing families in Ireland who are earning salaries and yet cannot afford a place to live. Picture: Larry Cummins
“Horrific, it was horrific. So stressful, and surreal. You sort of can’t believe that it’s happening.”
And yet it did happen. Imagine, in the space of less than a year, going from pinpointing a family home to buy, in a location where you want to live, to couchsurfing with family 300km away — and not even with the cushion of being assessed for emergency accommodation.
As a showcase for the vagaries of the Irish housing system, the past few seasons in the life of Lydia Syms take some beating.
Lydia, originally from Dublin, her husband, and four children moved to West Cork and stayed in three different rental properties over much of the past decade. The youngest of their children is just three years old and with Lydia’s husband working in the area, the family sought suitable properties for purchase.
As Lydia, who is in her 40s, said: “The housing market and the Celtic Tiger — we just missed the boat.”
From this point of optimism, events shanked wildly off-course. The family applied for a Rebuilding Ireland home loan, the government-backed mortgage scheme, with a view to a low six-figure sum which would secure the property they had selected. They were turned down, but swiftly appealed. They say they’d never been late with their rent, or missed a loan repayment. The appeal was unsuccessful, though it was after a difficult Christmas before they learned of it.
By then, they’d been served notice to quit by their landlord and were due out in January. Lydia utters the immortal words “Covid bought us time".
The requirement to leave the rented property was put on hold due to another lockdown and the imposition of the 5km limits. It would ultimately be May before they left.
The family had been on housing assistance payment (HAP), but confusingly, were taken off the housing list some years ago as it had been explained to them that Lydia’s husband’s earnings from his job were marginally above the threshold. So with their rental coming to an end, the need to get back on the housing list was imperative. Cork County Council obliged, but then things got sticky.
As moving day approached, Lydia says the family received an informal offer from the local authority of a property in Skibbereen, a considerable distance away from the primary and secondary schools attended by the family’s middle children. They turned it down on that basis. These are the choices.
“In retrospect, it would have been a roof, but we hadn’t even seen it, it would have meant moving schools,” she says.
The possibility of a private rental property was increasingly fanciful, not least because of the pandemic.
“Nationwide, I have never seen anything like the way the rental market is,” she says. “It is diabolical.”
Another offer — another Lydia says was made informally — came regarding a property they also deemed too far away for work and school. Yet, by mid-May, the couple were facing the reality of having nowhere to live. Worse, the local authority had said they could not assess them for emergency accommodation.
The has spoken to a number of people familiar with the family’s situation, and no one can say for sure why a family facing homelessness was not assessed by the council and reinstated on the housing list — but, whatever the reason, it happened.
Lydia says it could simply have been due to a shortage of emergency accommodation as hotels and B&Bs reopened, or possibly the ‘refusals’ to offers she says were never formally made.
As pointed out by a member of Housing Minister Darragh O’Brien’s staff, in return correspondence to Lydia, “under the Housing Act 1988, it is a matter for the local authority concerned, in your case Cork County Council, to determine whether a person is regarded as homeless”.
For Lydia, it’s a question of oversight of those powers.
It all meant family possessions placed in storage, and Lydia and the children — now minus her eldest daughter, in her early 20s, who had moved out — are couchsurfing with family in Dublin. Her husband remained in Cork to work. That situation has persisted since May up to the present day.
“It’s quite isolating, It’s a little dehumanising, it’s demoralising,” Lydia says. “You feel like an appalling parent — it’s really just incredibly strange. You’re just muddling through.”
She praises her sister for providing her with a roof over her head but says: “I remember feeling one day that I wish we could curl up in this room and feel invisible and not feel like we are in somebody’s way.” She describes the feeling as like you are “a bit of a non-person”.
Lydia refers to the need to “stop moaning” and an element of “personal responsibility” in life but she’s clear that she and her family did all they could to avoid what happened — and it happened anyway. It’s why she believes more oversight of local authority decision making is required; arguably a fair point, given the emphasis on councils to get it right under the Government’s new Housing For All plan.
A chink of light has appeared in recent weeks when Lydia was contacted by an Approved Housing Body which might be able to offer a suitable property back in West Cork. If it works out, it will mean stability, and maybe the chance to sort out financial issues, maybe secure a second job once all the children are in school. If her way with words is a guide, she may have missed her calling as a journalist; she certainly has the skills to be an advocate — she even set up a Facebook page for families undergoing the same displacement she felt as her family slid, slowly but surely, into homelessness. If the family secure the new tenancy, it might allow them to go again for what, a year ago, seemed tantalisingly within their grasp.
“This would at least put us in a position of not spending a couple of grand moving,” she says. “It’s insane the amount of money we have spent this summer, on nothing — on greying hair. I’m such a wreck.”
Lydia’s assertions and the details and context of her story were put to Cork Council Council, which said it does not comment on individual cases. However, a spokesperson for the local authority said it would provide comprehensive replies in due course to broader questions about access to social housing, management of choice-based letting (CBL), and assessment for emergency accommodation.
Ger Spillane, the South and Mid West manager of Focus Ireland, said: “Focus Ireland works in partnership with the local authorities here in Cork and around the country to support families and individuals who are homeless or at risk to secure a home:
As we are all sadly too aware there is a severe housing shortage, and this has impacted on households on lower incomes the most in recent years. There is a shortage of affordable rental accommodation and successive governments have failed to deliver enough social housing to meet an ever-growing demand.
Focus Ireland has welcomed the Government's new Housing For All strategy and its “ambitious housing targets”, as well as the commitment to ‘end homelessness by 2030’.
“However, Focus Ireland would stress that the commitment to ‘end homelessness’ rather than just ‘manage’ it, must be more than words and must help to drive real changes,” Mr Spillane said:
To make this a reality, policy must shift away from providing more shelters as a response to homelessness. This commitment must spearhead a move to provide more affordable housing, adequate supports, and effective prevention measures to help keep people in their homes and in their local communities.
Lydia says: “It may sound like an oxymoron but I want a mortgage, I want to have my own house,” adding that this is fuelled by renting since she was 19.
“I want one solid place for my children, a permanent place, that’s not going to change, something to leave them.”
CONNECT WITH US TODAY
Be the first to know the latest news and updates
