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YOU PROBABLY DON’T know me, but you’ve possibly walked past someone just like me every day. Many people don’t acknowledge us, even when we speak to them.
If you walked past me in the street, you wouldn’t know by looking that I’m homeless. I might appear to be a backpacker or tourist. I’m clean, tidy and don’t particularly look homeless.
I am one of the invisible, voiceless homeless people that inhabit the capital city and call it “home”.
And I have a disability. I’m sight impaired and suffer with a chronic pain condition called fibromyalgia.
Currently, I’m not allocated a bed in emergency accommodation, as there is a lack of accessible facilities and I am sleeping rough with my guide dog Quilla.
Emergency accommodation
I was previously allocated a bed in a semi-accessible homeless facility in a shared room with two other women. We were partitioned from other sections but we could still hear everything happening in the other sections adjoining us.
It was clear that heroin and tablets were openly being dealt and used. Arguments and fights were an almost daily occurrence and meeting intoxicated individuals was unavoidable. This made it complicated at best to use the common area.
It is difficult for me at the best of times to prevent a hot drink from being spilled due to my issues with my sight. Add to this, trying to negotiate around many people, intoxicated or otherwise, and it becomes much harder.
The facility had two accessible bathrooms but some residents would use it to smoke or inject heroin. It was not unusual to come across used needles or a crack pipe on the floor.
You’d constantly have to be alert for the inherent dangers and risks of using the facilities.
For example, one time while I was in the shared room, a resident left a trail of blood and blood-covered bedding in the room. She didn’t tell the staff and it was only discovered because I could smell it and alerted them.
Fights that escalate into violence
There are other more general issues with my experience with emergency accommodation. There are laundry facilities but the machines are often broken.
You’re allocated a time and day to do your washing but regularly there are someone else’s clothes in the machine.
It’s never quiet and you can hear arguments during the night that regularly escalate into physical violence, even in the small hours.
It’s a near constant barrage of noise, stress and drama, it’s never peaceful and the atmosphere is not conducive to being able to rest, have privacy and dignity.
Poor quality food
Food is supposed to be included with your payment but it is not substantial and of poor quality, and if you are vegetarian the food options are very limited.
The meals were not substantial enough to feed a child, yet alone an adult.
On most days, the only other food options available were bread, jam, cup a soup and pot noodles. Residents were refused seconds and even though mealtime were supposed to last from 5.30pm until 7pm, there would often be no food left after 6pm.
Many residents were relying on soup tables and runs to eat as the meagre amounts provided by the hostel were insufficient.
Problems with staff
The cleaners in the facility were friendly and kind and they made my time there significantly better as they treated residents with respect and dignity.
Some staff, however, were often dismissive of residents’ concerns and needs, with residents paying up to €60 a week to stay in substandard overcrowded accommodation that is not fit for purpose.
One male resident, that I heard asking for a second serving of food, was told by a staff member that they would close his bed if he didn’t leave the common area.
Staff would threaten you with written warnings if you didn’t comply or if you drew attention to an injustice against another resident or yourself.
Two or three of these written warnings and you are barred and your bed is “closed”.
‘Unseen and unheard’
In some ways, I am slightly more fortunate than other homeless people. I groom a lovely labrador husky on Mondays.
The owner, to whom I am eternally grateful, allows me to use her shower and does my laundry while I’m grooming her dog. She pays me a little for grooming and always packs a bag of food for me.
But in general, the homeless community simply doesn’t seem to count and it takes a toll. People I knew have taken their own lives, while the State has failed us.
We are barely existing, on the fringes of society, broadly unseen and unheard.
Rosemary is a visually impaired homeless person of mixed descent. She is an artisan who makes and sell handicrafts and is a disability and human rights activist.
THIS HOSTEL LIFE investigation
Noteworthy wants to look at every local authority in the country and find out how they are dealing with homelessness in their areas and analyse how much is being spent on hotels, B&Bs, and guesthouses right around the country.
Have you had a personal experience of emergency accommodation that you would like to share? You can contact the team at information@noteworthy.ie
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Too much profit in this algorithm. They will never turn this off we’ve all been victim to it in one way or the other the ” rabbit hole”
@Paul H: Exactly, they’re exploiting us thinking that immigration is now the solely big problem of Ireland, and not housing and health system; they are not making money from housing and health, but from fighting between us regarding immigration.
Cesspools like Meta seriously need to have much harsher penalties and sanctions for openly allowing and exposing disgusting and malicious content onto its platforms.
Ag yes, the EU; lover of corporates, disliker of its own citizens. Serious discussions needed around our future participation in the EU with the direction it seems to be headed
@Lewis Armstrong: where would we be without the EU. Clown
@Michael o Dwyer: We don’t need the EU.
@Michael o Dwyer: Better off that we are now! Able to set out own laws without interference; able to deport gimmigrants; able to save money (we are a net contributor to the EU and have been for years).
If tobacco didn’t exist and someone started trying to market it tomorrow it would be shut down straight away and rightly classified as hazardous. But because it does exist and has the all-powerful money invested in it you can’t outright ban it for fear of upsetting the elite, you can only try to reduce it’s market and hope it goes away,
Social Media is similar in that if someone brought out X/FB/Inst tomorrow and we know now what the effect of these platforms is going to be then most likely they would be rejected, by the citizenry anyway. But we didn’t reject them, or legislate for what powers they might have, and subsequently abuse, when they first started up, that was a job for the gov of the time. They are now multi-billion dollar industries and their power can’t be shutdown or easily controlled. They will always be steps ahead in harvesting new users no matter what rules are put in place.
The final nail in the coffin is politicians and political parties, here in Ireland and in most countries, have aligned themselves with social media because it has turned out to be great way of brainwashing the masses and winning elections. So the government(s) have no real reason to tackle this when to do so would be to their own detriment, unless we give them a reason to deal with it? They may not do brown envelopes anymore but the back-scratching corruption continues, to our detriment.
Finally, a little government like ours may not be able to bring in the necessary rules to stop social medias toxic side, but it could at first, decide to break the link between politics and social media by banning no FB pages, X profiles etc etc for parties and politicians and, at least, ending the cozy partnership they have.
We’re all fighting between us regarding immigration, and social media companies are poring billions (for real) in their profits. So now we all think that immigration is the only big important social issue in Ireland, when it’s not, it’s something that will be tackled more or less, etc, but then we will still have housing issues and health system issues. We are being played and what’s more important, a lot of us will spoil their vote because of that.
I am all for child protection. I think there needs be a redoubling of efforts. I cannot understand why the usual suspects objected to “The Sound Of Freedom”. Having said that, we need parameters and definition. What is harmful content exactly? Is the definition broad or narrow? Who exactly gets to decide? Are the adjudicators appointed or elected? A just a comment on the reporting above – we have to watch out for women and anorexia as well as men and porn. A cursory search will show that over 30% of those that watch porn are women and over 20% of those with anorexia are men. Just saying.
@Oh Mammy: Go on Facebook, Instagram, or Twitter (refuse to call it X), and you will find out very quickly what the definition of “toxic” and “harmful” is.
Will someone please think of the children!
@Daniel – that a very nasty and obvious portion of it. It’s not really that part I am talking about.
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