There is still a need for the type of emergency shelter which closed yesterday, writes Ruadhán Mac Cormaic
MARCO CASTS a glance along the line of morning traffic shooting east along the Liffey, his voice outdone by its roar, and gives a half-hearted shrug of the shoulder. “I don’t know where I will be sleeping tonight. A group of people might open a squat – we have no legal house,” he says. “I don’t know. Plan B? Maybe drink. Maybe not.”
It’s 8am, and the cold weather shelter where Marco has slept for the past fortnight closed its doors yesterday. The centre, which opened in January after Minister for the Environment John Gormley heard a plea by homeless campaigner Alice Leahy, provided beds for up to 22 homeless men each night since then.
It was a temporary response to the plight of rough sleepers affected by the recent cold weather, but Dublin Simon – which ran the hostel – says the high take-up of beds pointed to the need for high-quality emergency accommodation for those outside mainstream services. “We’re disappointed by the closure in the sense that most of the service users will be sleeping rough tonight,” said Catherine Kenny, Simon’s head of housing services. Simon found accommodation last night for just five of the 19 people who slept at the shelter on Thursday night.
While the department and Dublin Simon agree the shelter’s lack of support services mean it was not a viable long-term solution to the problem, support groups say the profile of those who used it points to a discrete problem for foreign nationals.
Like Marco, a Pole who had been sleeping rough since losing his job in the fishing industry in the past few months, most of the shelter’s occupants were eastern Europeans who found themselves out of work and unable to pay their rent. Some had shunned mainstream services due to what they perceived as intrusive questioning, or the need to be officially referred for a bed.
Many others failed to meet the habitual residence condition, introduced by the Government in May 2004 due to fears of “welfare tourism” among citizens of the 10 states that joined the EU that month. It means that, in general, foreigners cannot claim unemployment benefit or other social assistance unless they have lived in the State for two years.
In this predicament was Krysztof, from southern Poland, who checked out at Wolfe Tone Quay yesterday after spending the last 10 nights there. Lured here almost two years ago by a sense of boredom and a yearning for something new, he took an English language course and held down a job as a technician at a technology company until he was let go in December. “When I lost my job, it was very expensive here. I didn’t have any money to pay the rent and I didn’t want to borrow the money from friends, so that’s how I started coming ,” he says.
“I usually came in here before 10pm and I got something to eat – it was always fresh, always clean. It’s better than being out.”
While welfare officers have some discretion in applying eligibility criteria for the habitual residence condition, Krysztof was told he didn’t qualify. For weeks his job search has been somewhat hopeless – there was an interview not too long ago, but nothing came of it. But in common with his compatriots at the shelter, he has no wish to return to Poland.
“None of them want to go back to Poland because, first of all, there’s no jobs, and secondly, they have families there and they don’t want to go home and say, ‘I’ve failed,’” says Joanna Rekas, a worker at the shelter. “They say, ‘How can I say to my wife and children that I lost my job?’ ”
Recent studies show the number of foreign nationals becoming homeless is rising. According to a report by the Homeless Agency Partnership, published in December, non-Irish people accounted for 38 per cent of rough sleepers last year, compared to 9 per cent in 2005.
The preponderance of foreigners who turned up at the cold weather shelter (on its last night, only one of the men who slept there was Irish) took workers by surprise.
Catherine Kenny says that while the shelter provided a vital service by taking people off the streets, real progress in helping people move out of homelessness would require more long-term action. She points to perceived inconsistencies in the application of the residence condition.
“A lot of non-Irish nationals presenting are finding it very difficult because of the inconsistencies,” she remarks. “As one of the men here said, it depends on what welfare officer you get on the day.
“They’re not being catered for within the system, and there’s no obvious move to cater for them.”
Freshly showered, Krysztof leaves the shelter planning a day like most others of late. “I’m going to the library. Then I’ll probably go and sit near the sea.”