We need a government who will prioritise plight of hidden homeless

There are thousands of families living in overcrowded and inappropriate conditions, writes Fergus Finlay. 

HOW is it possible that Ireland, a proud European republic, first of all allows a private venture fund to buy a housing estate, and then immediately to begin eviction proceedings against anyone who is a tenant in the estate? How can that happen in the modern world? What kind of country would allow that?

And yet if we can believe the news, that’s exactly what is happening to perhaps 60 families in Tyrrellstown in west Dublin. They are facing eviction because the debts of the developer who built their homes were sold to what we now know as a vulture fund, and they are determined to make as quick a profit as they can by dumping families on the street. In the middle of a large and growing crisis of homelessness, these families and their children will be added to a spectacularly shameful set of statistics.

Except they’re not statistics. Let me tell you about some children we’re working with in Barnardos.

Jenny is five, and she sleeps in a wardrobe. It’s the only way she can get a little bit of space of her own. The light is on in her one-bed apartment a lot, because her baby sister is awake for a good deal of the night.

Jenny lives in this tiny cramped apartment with her Mum and baby sister. Although it’s tiny, the rent is so high that it takes most of her Mum’s income to pay the rent. So heating, and sometimes food, is often in short supply. Her Mum has to make these choices every day. A part-time job would help with the rent, but there is no possibility of child care she could possibly afford.

Mary is eight. Her proudest possession is the bike two of her aunties gave her last Christmas. But she can’t use it, except when she goes, once a week or so, to visit one of the aunties. Mary, her Mum, and her little brother and sister are living in emergency accommodation. It’s a room with its own bathroom in a hotel. All their possessions are piled up in one corner, and there’s no room for the bike. Even if there were, there’s nowhere safe to cycle it.

Sinead is a teenager, and got pregnant. Her mother, who has always struggled with her mental health, freaked, and the relationship between them deteriorated. When Sinead’s baby was two she had to take her to a refuge because of the violence and threats of violence at home. For all sorts of complicated reasons she and her toddler ended up in emergency accommodation — somewhere to sleep, with breakfast provided, but nowhere to stay by day. Sinead is now struggling with depression.

There’s a family we know in another part of Ireland who are doing everything they can to avoid emergency accommodation. But the result has been three generations of the same family — three parents and seven children, living in a tiny three-bed house.

These are true stories. They’re not all Dublin stories — these things are happening all over Ireland. Perhaps they’re not as dramatic as the stories of refugees fleeing from torture and death. Perhaps these children should count themselves as lucky — they have a roof over their heads, after all (most of the time anyway).

Nearly 6,000 people living in emergency accomodation, reports @noelbaker1 https://t.co/5nEHDsewA3 pic.twitter.com/GRGcwrCJIL

— Irish Examiner (@irishexaminer) March 12, 2016

But here’s the thing. There’s a new kind of homelessness re-emerging in Ireland now. Homelessness has always been a feature of Irish life — although often confined in recent years to rough sleepers, people often on their own who couldn’t, for one reason or another, cope with the rigours of ordinary life. Then the phenomenon of family homelessness, always involving children, began to hit. And now there’s a third kind — what we call hidden homelessness.

There are thousands of families living in hugely overcrowded and inappropriate conditions throughout Ireland. The children of those families, in every single case, are at risk. In the best of scenarios they’re at risk of not being able to grow up as children should — free to play, encouraged to do well at school, able to share treats with their friends. And there are too many other, darker scenarios, where overcrowding leads to stress and challenges to mental health, sometimes to violence. Where economic pressures lead to children being cold, under-nourished, and without recourse to a doctor when they need it.

Of course these are big problems. They can’t be fixed overnight, especially in a country that turned its back on local authority housing a half a generation ago, and relied on ever-increasing property prices to entice developers into supplying the homes we need. Of course it will take time.

But the thing is, we know where these families live. We know that (for example) a modest and rapid investment in modular housing would begin to redress the worst of these problems overnight.

And much more is possible quickly. I drive around Ireland a lot. Lately I’ve taken to making notes of the half-finished apartment blocks or the boarded-up houses I see. I don’t know who owns them, but I’d be happy to point them out to anyone who’s interested.

But nobody is interested. If we had a government, we would (or should, anyway) be demanding that they establish a Homelessness Agency. It doesn’t need to be large, and it doesn’t need a long shelf life. It needs a budget of course, and it needs the power to develop a set of accountable priorities, to commandeer unused properties, to compulsorily intervene where there is clear profiteering going on. It could be staffed on a temporary basis out of the local authorities and the housing agencies and charities — all of whom would put their shoulders to the wheel if asked.

But of course, we need a government. And a government with a sense of priorities. Perhaps even in this case supported by a left-wing opposition with a sense of priorities.

The homelessness situation is a scandal. It’s shaming for a country like ours. Maybe we’ve never bothered to insert a right to shelter in our constitution, but we’ve always prided ourselves on our attitude to home.

That’s why, if anything, it’s even more shaming to see the entire political system — especially on the so-called left — bickering about water charges in the face of this scandal. We all know that Irish Water has become a public policy joke, but the politics of saying we won’t even discuss other social priorities until you get rid of Irish Water is beyond juvenile.

If we can’t begin to address the problem of homelessness, if we allow it because of political fatuity to get worse, we are building up a store of mental health problems and anti-social behaviour among the children who are living intolerable lives now. When real and solid problems are staring politics in the face — and especially when there is an entire sector ready and willing to help, once they are mobilised and enabled — it is genuinely astonishing that the system would prefer to play stupid, points-scoring games.

They say we get the politics we deserve. Our children don’t deserve this. They deserve their politicians to behave like adults, and not like the noisiest kids in the schoolyard. Sadly, their politicians only want to let them down.