LAST UPDATE | 13 Feb

MY FIRST HOME away from home was a cramped two-bedroom duplex, where I shared a twin room with a friend from my hometown. Highlights of this humble abode included a gaping hole under our front door, broken second-hand appliances replaced with more broken second-hand appliances, and a mysterious opening in the kitchen that welcomed an army of slugs each night.

Then came my cupboard in Stoneybatter. No, really — a cupboard. It was so small I had to keep my bedside locker in the hallway. My bedroom consisted of a single bed wedged wall-to-wall, one singular shelf, and enough black mould to start its own tenants’ rights movement.

At 27, my partner and I moved in with another couple, all of us working full-time and renting through an agency. The day we signed the lease, they mentioned a small leak in the living room, reassuring us it would be fixed tomorrow. How efficient! we thought. Nine months later, we came home to find no roof. Now on the verge of collapse, it had to be immediately torn down, without warning, while we were all at work.

I have many more housing horror stories, but I know I’m beating a dead horse here. These revelations are not new, and at this point, writing about them feels as desensitising as I can imagine reading them does. Every headline has been saying the same thing for my entire adult life: Ireland’s young people are stuck. If we’re not trapped in precarious rental situations, we’re stuck living with our parents — nearly 70% of 25-year-olds, according to the latest CSO findings. And if we’re not stuck at home, we’re taking our chances elsewhere — with one in eight having already emigrated.

I look at these statistics and see my own experiences reflected in every one of them. I’ve hopped from rental to rental, pouring most of my pay cheque into housing that was, quite literally, collapsing around me. I’ve lived abroad, in Berlin, where for the first time, I could actually imagine a future. And I’ve found myself back in a converted shed at my partner’s parents’ house, the two of us trying to save for a future neither of us could clearly picture anymore. In one way or another, I’ve been systematically stuck — waiting— since I left my childhood home in 2014.

Waiting

I was asked to write this op-ed because I wrote an album about waiting. Waiting Room is about the roadblocks, both internal and external, that leave us feeling powerless and strip away our sense of agency. While there are many internal pressures I’ve faced throughout my twenties, no external roadblock has been so impenetrable as the Irish housing crisis.

The instability it has caused me has seeped into every aspect of adult life. It has, in effect, forced me to live in survival mode. After all, it is difficult to relax and take a breath in any real way when you are not sure where you will be living in 12 months’ time. 

I think about the sacrifices that came with that level of instability. I think about that hometown friend, whom I first shared a room with. Despite my humorous retelling, it was an incredibly stressful living situation, one where I developed anxiety and panic attacks for the first time in my life. That friendship did not survive that tenancy, and I can’t help but think things may have turned out differently if we had been dealt a better hand.

I think of the choice to sign a lease where I would be paying 60% of my pay cheque in rent, hoping this higher price tag might guarantee some sort of longevity. Perhaps if I had chosen differently, I would have been prepared for the mountain of medical bills coming my way that year. 

I think of my choice to move back from Berlin, a place that allowed me to dream of a different kind of future. Though a precarious place in its own right, it offered affordable rents, a better work-life balance, and a well-oiled city full of opportunities to connect with a community. I wanted that, but I didn’t want it there; I wanted to build a home in my home.

And I think of my past relationship, where we made the difficult decision to move in with his parents. We were lucky, in a lot of ways, to be able to do that, and I will forever be grateful to his family for opening their home to us. But it was difficult, in ways that are challenging to put into words. We were two adults living like children. And yes, there were many reasons why that relationship didn’t make it, but I think a large part is due to the fact that we just had too many roadblocks standing in our way.

‘Something has to give’

Despite this doom and gloom, I am hopeful that something has to give. As a new friend often says, we have not survived the centuries to be conquered now. It’s been a tough couple of weeks with talk of our new government falling into the old trap of relying heavily on ‘the market’ by supporting landlords and potentially ending rent pressure zones. I truly hope this isn’t the case and that they’re listening to us, the people this time, rather than catering to economic forces. We are the ones who hold up this country, we are its backbone — not some nebulous, cold system driven by financial interests.

I do want to believe that there is hope behind some of the headlines. I’m not here to suggest more solutions, but what I want to say is that while we wait for changes to be made, I have come to realise that the real work — both personal and collective — lies in how we choose to confront these roadblocks we are faced with.

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I have often confronted my roadblocks with a lot of shame. I have felt embarrassed, behind, and like I am just not doing it “right”. Shame has distracted me from feeling angry, but my god, it is so important to feel your anger. Anger fuels action, and action translates into real, lasting change.

In case you too need to hear this, the living situation you are in is not your fault. It is the fault of a system that is failing us time and time again. The feeling of being stuck — of having your potential stalled not by a lack of ambition, but by economic and political failures — is infuriating, and you should be infuriated.

So please, get angry. Speak up, and use your voice. Email your TDs. Keep telling your story, no matter how many times we have to hear it.

Artist Maria Kelly is a musician. She plays the Dublin Unitarian Church, Belfast, London and Brighton in April. For more, see here and Instagram here.