Dublin’s homeless children

Tonight in Dublin more than 1,000 people, including almost 700 children, will sleep in emergency accommodation. The vast majority of these children are not in homes, nor in bedrooms they can call their own, nor in their communities, for one reason: their parents could not pay the rent.

A few months ago these families were being called the “new homeless”, but they are fast becoming an entrenched feature of the homelessness statistics.

Although this is a countrywide problem – there are a further 118 homeless children outside the capital – it is particularly acute in Dublin. The Dublin Region Homeless Executive, which oversees homeless services across the city’s four local authorities, is faced with an “unprecedented demand for emergency accommodation” says its spokeswoman. “Emergency accommodation is provided in hotels as a last resort and it is not seen as a sustainable solution,” she says.

In May last year 58 adults with children were in emergency accommodation in Dublin. By this time last year that number had more than doubled, to 128 adults with children in hotels, bed and breakfasts or other emergency accommodation.

By May this year the number had risen to 184. The most recent count, in the week of October 20th-26th, found 1,101 people – 421 adults and 680 children – living in emergency accommodation in Dublin. These children are part of 307 families, of which just under two-thirds are headed by single parents; 114 are headed by couples.

The reasons for their homelessness have been recounted repeatedly. Since April 2104, when this writer interviewed Sabrina McMahon, a 36-year-old mother of three who had spent several nights sleeping in her car with her three young children, many more parents of young children have spoken about losing their homes.

All have told variations on the same story: a landlord increased rent to a rate far beyond what they could afford, and they couldn't find anywhere they could afford to rent. Everyone who has spoken to The Irish Times is from a low-income family, and most get rent supplement, a fixed payment, from the Department of Social Protection, towards the cost of renting a home in the private sector.

None lost their homes because of rent arrears or antisocial behaviour, or for being bad tenants. All were tenants in the private rented sector and became homeless following rent increases. Each one was at the end of his or her tether: exhausted, stressed and worried about their children. Many were tearful and embarrassed, and all expressed varying degrees of despair.

The vast majority of these families had never been in touch with homeless services before. Of the 45 families who became homeless in Dublin last month, 41 had never been homeless before.

“We’re all wrecked. I’m exhausted. They ask where we’re going, and I tell them I have nowhere to bring them. I feel like a hopeless parent, just hopeless,” one mother says. “I tried to make it like an adventure for the kids, but the older one knew. You try to protect them . . . but they hear the phone calls,” another says.

Several say that if it was only themselves they had to worry about they could cope. Their clearly expressed anguish has been about the impact their situations are having on their children.

“The parents are very traumatised themselves,” says Roisín McDonnell of the Focus Ireland family case-management service. Focus Ireland is the appointed statutory lead agency supporting homeless families in Dublin. Where last year it was seeing eight new families a month it is now meeting almost 50 a month.

McDonnell manages two family support teams, among whom are staff dedicated to minimising the impact of homelessness on children. This involves helping parents establish routines after moving into emergency accommodation, and helping children express how they are feeling. Staff support parents every week – and even on a daily basis – to deal with the terrible pressure on the family, particularly the children.

The bottom line, says McDonnell, is that homelessness damages children deeply. “No matter how strong or how able to cope a parent might be, in the end something’s got to give. Even where the children are extremely well cared for, in the end where children are involved, homelessness equals bad,” she says.

“All the normal childhood stuff goes out the window. Sleepovers are gone, friends coming to play, even family visiting may be gone. They will have to give up pets. They can’t celebrate birthdays. They have no space for their toys.

“Their school could be some distance away, which can mean an hour on two buses and being late for school. They are getting up early and they’re tired in school. Their nutrition suffers, they are more exposed to infections, they are getting sick more often and miss school. They are worried and angry and can’t concentrate in school.

“Even the kids who seem to be coping at first may become withdrawn or they may start acting out. They’ll never say, ‘I’m angry because I’m homeless,’ but they are a ball of confusion. Why has this happened to me? Why is my mam upset? Why can’t I be with my friends? Why am I even talking to this support worker? They have lost everything they know as normal.”

These children are victims of a society-wide housing crisis that most harshly affects the poorest households, says Roughan MacNamara, advocacy manager at Focus Ireland.

For low-income households the housing crisis began about six years ago, when local authorities pulled out of building homes. Although 5,000 units of social housing were built in 2007, public provision all but halted the following year. Last year 293 units were built, 183 of them in Dublin.

The social-housing waiting list has rocketed, from 28,000 households in 1993 to 48,400 in 2002, 56,250 in 2008 and a current official figure of 89,000.

Without access to social housing, low-income households have been forced into the private rented sector. More than 70,000 households depend on the rent-supplement scheme, 27,000 of them in Dublin. The scheme could work – if rent supplement covered the rent. The rates have not changed since July last year. Rents have spiralled, however.

In Dublin the maximum rent a one- child family on rent supplement may pay is €950 a month. With two children it’s €975 and with three or more it’s €1,000. In Fingal the limits are lower: €850, €900 and €950 a month.

These caps are making families homeless, says MacNamara, and must be increased urgently. He adds that Focus Ireland has also proposed tax breaks for landlords who rent to social tenants, as any system must work for both tenants and landlords alike.

Under a relatively new initiative between the housing charity Threshold, Focus Ireland and the Department of Social Protection, families in Dublin at risk of homelessness may apply on a case-by-case basis for an increase in their rent caps.

This system operates on the principle that families can be kept in their homes for far less than it costs to place them in emergency housing. The costs are relatively low: more than half of the families who have been helped in this way since June received rent-supplement increases of less than €200 a month.

Rent control

A recent report from the Private Residential Tenancies Board said that rent control could make the sector’s crisis worse. Minister for the Environment Alan Kelly says he has yet to decide on the issue.

“The Taoiseach accepts there is a family-homelessness crisis in Dublin,” says MacNamara. “But we have not yet seen a crisis response. The Government has the power to prevent more children becoming homeless. They must raise rent supplement to match market rents, and they must bring in rent controls.”

“The limited response to date – while thankfully helping some families – is not acceptable any longer, as we still have over 40 families becoming homeless every month. These are children, the most vulnerable and innocent victims of this crisis.”

The department says it is doing all it can. About €2.2 billion was announced in the budget last month for investment in social housing over the next three years. A comprehensive social-housing strategy is to be published in the coming weeks. On Wednesday the Minister announced an additional €4 million to keep homelessness services in the capital running until the end of the year.

MacNamara says that this is welcome, particularly as long-term planning has been missing, but at least 18 months will pass before these capital investments deliver homes for people. And, in the meantime, hundreds, or perhaps thousands, of children will lose “everything they know as normal”.

Over the past five weeks some of these children have told The Irish Times what it was like to lose their homes. We met them with the help of Focus Ireland, the Ombudsman for Children's Office and the children's parents. All names and place names have been changed to protect the children's identities.