After 50 years, where do I begin? Homelessness is an atrocious personal and social dilemma with many causes and, apparently, few solutions. Its acuteness is brought into particularly sharp relief at Christmas time when the image of a merry, warm and bountiful home is unremittingly thrust upon us as the “normal” setting for this festive season.
For those coming to my team and myself at the Alice Leahy Trust, on Bride Road in Dublin’s Liberties, the grinding reality of life could hardly be further from the glittering Yuletide fantasy.
Only people from the outer reaches of homelessness – those who are sleeping rough – come to us.
A tent, a doorway, a derelict building provides shelter and, when the sun rises, some of them make their way to us.
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How and why they became homeless is not a matter we pursue with them. Our immediate concern is breaking the cycle of their daily misery.
There is no promise to transform lives here – nor is there any such expectation on their part – but there is our pledge of friendship and warmth; there is a shower, some clean clothes and footwear, a cup of tea and coffee and something to eat. And someone to talk to.
We endeavour to offer the basic elements that mark the start of the standard day for most people who have a roof over their heads. Where necessary, we try to form a bridge between the homeless person and appropriate NGOs or statutory bodies.
There is no judgment at The Alice Leahy Trust. Our only insistence is that we all maintain a calm and respectful atmosphere together.
[ Number of homeless people in Ireland reaches new record high in OctoberOpens in new window ]
Sometimes they tell us their story. But, after five decades that I have been listening to homeless people, I have yet to find a neat common denominator to define what shaped them, what brought them to this pass. Homelessness is a complex issue, forged by various factors, often interrelated.
Was it, perhaps, an accident of birth – born into circumstances where the child never really stood a chance of survival to healthy adulthood, let alone achieve his or her full potential?
We know that poverty and deprivation – economic hardship – are primary drivers of homelessness in later life.
Was it abandonment, a chaotic childhood, abuse, domestic violence and personal trauma, psychological and emotional pain, that left them unable or unwilling to sustain a stable adult life? Clearly addiction and substance misuse lead to broken bodies, minds and sometimes loss of home – and we see a great deal of this every day.
The list of reasons is long but while The Alice Leahy Trust is entirely non-judgmental in our health and social support, it is crucial that we understand the factors involved if we are to develop workable strategies to address and reduce homelessness.
Forty per cent of the population of New York were born elsewhere in the world. In Dublin, that figure hovers over 30 per cent. These demographic changes are reflected in our centre on Bride Road.
In the monochrome society that was Ireland in the early 70s, the majority of homeless people that I encountered were white male and female and, in the main, Irish. We knew our client base very well on a personal basis. Many of them were regarded as “characters” in the community – eccentric if tragic individuals.
Now, we also see a spread of people from many international backgrounds. Migration, displacement and exile are bringing them here. This, in turn, creates subcultures, all trapped in the same place – homelessness.
In marking 50 years of our work – and ultimately what became The Alice Leahy Trust – we decided to produce a book, a kind of collection of pictures and stories that would track our voyage to date and be an expression of thanks to all who made our work possible over the decades.
We mused for a little while on an appropriate title and kept returning to the same word: “outsiders”.
I could think of none better to encapsulate those people who are so warily (and often harshly) regarded as strangers, oddities, newcomers, aliens, foreigners, those “not like us”.
What a terrifying place to be – out there, beyond society?
It is incumbent on all of us, be it at NGO or State level, to come together to devise workable strategies to mitigate the effects of homelessness. Despair is a term I tend to avoid, but when I walk the streets of our wealthy capital and see so many people living in tents and lying in doorways, I ask myself is it really beyond our intelligence and capability to find ways of reducing this?
Meanwhile, after 50 years, I cling to the central tenet of our Trust’s service: to see only the human being, in all his or her frailty, and to not recognise colour, creed or nationality ... simply speak the language of human kindness.
Alice Leahy is director of services at the Alice Leahy Trust which she founded 50 years ago to help the homeless. A commemorative book, “Outsiders – 50 Years of the Alice Leahy Trust” is available at Alan Hanna’s Bookshop on Rathmines Road Lower in Dublin. The Trust is fully funded by unsolicited voluntary donations, receipted and gratefully acknowledged. But you can help via https://aliceleahytrust.ie/donate
