The national waiting list for local-authority housing is officially 90,000 households (up from 56,000 in 2008). This Housing Agency figure is a year old, however. The current number could be more than 100,000 households.
Angela and Peter Brown, who are in their 50s, have 11 people at their table each morning: six of their grandchildren; two of their daughters, Lisa and Rachel; and Rachel’s partner, Stephen James; as well as themselves.
Lisa and Rachel are effectively homeless: both have lost the homes they rented in the past 18 months, and both have nowhere else to eat breakfast.
“It’s chaos,” says Angela. “It’s too much. Everyone is on top of each other. There’s no peace. I am at breaking point, but what can we do? My children and grandchildren have no homes of their own.”
Lisa, who has three children, aged 11, seven and 10 months, had to leave her home when the rent-supplement cap was cut, in 2012. “I asked the landlord to reduce the rent. It was €1,000,” she says. He had reduced it the year before, from €1,100, and couldn’t cut it again. She looked for somewhere else, “but everything was €1,300, and none of the landlords will accept rent allowance any more anyway.”
She moved back to her parents’ three-bedroom house in January last year. She has been on the Dublin City Council housing waiting list for 10 years.
Rachel and Stephen were also renting – and also paying €1,000 a month. They have two five-year-old daughters and a one-year-old son. Their landlord was in arrears with the mortgage, and in January the house was repossessed.
When they, too, were unable to find anywhere else to live, Dublin City Council arranged for them to stay in a hotel. The family of five have been sharing a room with one double bed, two single beds and a travel cot. “It’s horrible,” says Stephen. “There’s no space, nowhere for the kids to play.”
Breakfast is provided, but the couple say they cannot bring the children to breakfast, as people are often still in the hotel bar from the night before. “We come up here at eight o’clock each morning,” says Rachel.
The children go to school locally, then have dinner at their grandparents’ house. The family returns to the hotel at about 8pm.
The situation is putting immense pressure on Angela and Peter. Peter drives a taxi at night. “He can’t get sleep during the day with kids roaring around the place,” says Angela.
Stephen wants to look for work but feels he can’t while he’s living in a hotel. Rachel has a childcare qualification and is due to start a community-employment scheme next month.
“We just want a normal life. We’re not looking for anything fancy,” says Stephen. “Just bricks and cement and a bit of stability. It’s not fair on the kids.”
