The son of a woman who was found dead in her tent on a busy Dublin street said they had “tried so hard” to get her off the streets but the system “failed her”.
Natasha Smith (43) was a mother of two and originally from Clondalkin. She was found unresponsive on Pearse Street at about 12.30pm on Friday, January 16th. She had been living on the streets for 17 years.
Stephen, her youngest son who turns 21 next month, said her life unravelled after she had two children.
“Her life was going so well. She had Lee, my brother who is less than two years older than me, who was in hospital for five months after being born due to having a severe case of meningitis. Then she became pregnant with me and she just changed, according to my nanny. No one could understand why,” he said.
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“She went from being such a funny and happy person to not being able for a settled life. Mam left our father and went out on to the streets and she started on drugs.
“The drugs didn’t kill her, it was because she wouldn’t sleep in hostels or homeless centres as she felt really unsafe. She felt safer in her tent and living out of that.
“But the one thing she did for Lee and I was to ensure that our nanny and grandad were able to bring us up and not end up out on the streets with her. She gave us the best start in life. I will be forever thankful for that.”
Her sons and many family members tried everything to convince her to come back home and live in Clondalkin, but she “just wouldn’t”.
“We looked after her on the streets as best we could. Lee, our nanny and I would bring her in food, money and clothing,” he said.
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“We continually asked her to come home, gave her every opportunity to get treatment but she just wouldn’t. None of us could understand why, but in the end we had to accept and respect her choices. It wasn’t easy to allow her be like that. She was really loved.”
Ms Smith was from a family of six sisters and one brother. Her son Stephen, who still lives in Clondalkin, said that the family are “so, so grateful for the outpouring of support in every way possible from members of the public, the homeless organisations, A Lending Hand and Liberty Soup Run”.
But he said they needed wider support to help their mother.
“The system of dealing with homelessness and all that comes with that most definitely failed her. None of the family want to lay blame but someone or some organisation somewhere needs to take over when a person can’t help or won’t help themselves,” he said.
“Whether you are living on the streets out of choice or not, or as a result of some type of an addiction and you are living in the aftermath of that, no one deserves to die on the streets.
“Do you think we liked seeing our mother living like that, of course not, but what else could we do? We tried everything. It’s been a really tough couple of weeks, as Lee and I lost our other nanny too.”
Ms Smith was found in her tent by her boyfriend. Emergency services were alerted and she was subsequently taken to St James’s Hospital where she was officially pronounced dead.
“Tonight all the family are coming here to where I live with my nana and grandad as mam will be at home with us for two days before her funeral mass on Friday. It will be really lovely to have her home at last,” Stephen Smith said on Wednesday.
Keira Gill, the founder of A Lending Hand, a Dublin-based volunteer outreach group that has been operating for more than a decade, said that putting groups of grown women in a room in a hostel or accommodation together is “never going to work”.
Ms Gill said: “We simply don’t have the right on-site supports and this causes so many problems that women like Natasha feel safer in a tent. They are literally risking their lives to feel safe.”
The family’s GoFundMe fundraising campaign has now reached €10,000 and they have closed it down as it is enough to pay for her funeral.
Ms Smith’s funeral will take place on Friday at the Immaculate Heart of Mary Church at 11.30am followed by a cremation at Newlands Cross Crematorium.
