ABOUT 60 families in Ballymun, Dublin, remain in three almost-empty blocks of flats, over 10 years since the start of the much-vaunted regeneration of the area.
They complain of isolation, fear of antisocial activities, lack of maintenance of the housing area and lack of information about when they will be rehoused.
Campaigner and Ballymun resident John Lyons has called for the families to be “rehoused immediately”.
In January last year, Rachel Peavoy (30), a mother of two, was found dead in her flat in an almost-empty block on Shangan Road. The cause of her death was given as hypothermia and a verdict of death by misadventure was returned at the inquest in April this year.
Mr Lyons said he had come across other cases of very cold flats in almost-empty blocks at residents’ meetings.
“A mother of four children at one meeting said she had had to buy electric heaters for the bedrooms and she was not able to get any of that cost back from the community welfare officer.”
One young mother, Yasmin Lee (31), lives in a almost-vacant block at Sillogue Road, with her three children, Paul (5), Chloe (9) and Rebecca (13). Just two other flats in her section of the block are occupied.
The other 31 flats are empty, their front doors boarded up, their windows broken and their walls defaced with graffiti.
At the entrance to the stairwell of Ms Lee’s block recently were six adolescent boys. Just three steps up from the entrance, a boy of about 15 was smoking a cannabis joint. A smell of urine filled the stairwell, which was dark at lunchtime. Ms Lee’s front door was reinforced with a steel-grill gate which she locks from the inside.
Giving a tour of her two-bedroom flat, she goes first into the kitchen which smells musty. “Sorry about the smell. It’s awful. It’s the damp. Black damp, you see,” she says, gesturing to dark discoloration around the sink.
Cupboard doors are missing and falling away from their hinges. The window has a large hole about 1½in across.
“That’s been broken for over a year. When it’s winter, you can really feel the breeze. We have to sit watching telly with duvets over us.” The heating is working but “we’ll wait and see what happens in the winter. With the broken windows, it’s cold anyway.”
Her daughters share one bedroom, while she and her son share the other. In it, the wallpaper is torn, and the window and skirting boards are broken.
In the bathroom, the toilet is loose on the floor. Marks left by water flowing down the walls are visible and pigeons can be heard cooing in the empty flat above.
Ms Lee pays €55 a week in rent and “about €15 a week” for electricity. She gets a single-parent allowance of €278 a week, plus €450 a month children’s allowance.
She has worked “different jobs but can’t anymore with the kids, and childcare is too dear”.
“We’re afraid here. People dump their rubbish in the stairs. I’ve been asking the council to fix things, to get us out. They say there’s nothing available.
“We are on top of each other and I feel under constant stress. Rebecca can’t go see her friends in the evening because it’s dangerous in the stairs.”
A spokesman for Dublin City Council said that of the original 30 tower blocks, nine remained.
One 15-storey (containing 90 flats) and two eight-storey spine blocks (with 96 flats each) are 80 per cent occupied. Three are empty and due for demolition, and three more are about 20 per cent occupied.
Eamonn Farrelly, chairman of Ballymun Regeneration Ltd, said the flats were being maintained and those in the almost-empty blocks “should be moved by the end of next year”.
Mr Lyons said this was the first time tenants had heard a date for moving from Ballymun Regeneration: “I see no reason why these few families could not be moved immediately.”
Ms Lee said she had no idea when she and her children would be rehoused. “I just feel like we have been totally forgotten about.”
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