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LATEST NATIONAL FIGURES put the number of homeless people in Ireland at almost 4,000 and those working to reduce the problem say it’s only getting worse.
As part of TheJournal.ie‘s series on homelessness, we’re looking at all aspects of the homeless crisis, and all day today, we’ve been asking what you have to say about it. We’ll be using your feedback later as part of the series.
Here are a few questions to start you off:
Over to you – answers in the comments section below…
Pic: Andrew Bennett via Flickr/Creative Commons
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Here’s a sobering thought : we all have the potential to be homeless within 3 months. All it takes is to lose your job and your support network to fail.
Jack , you’re a Moran
Jack your a idoit
*moron *
Willy, you’re an idiot, not “your a idoit”.
I just can’t stand these sweeping statements that we’re ALL 3 months from being homeless when that is just not true.
Ever lost your job Jack? The sobering reality is that if you’re renting there IS a possibility of being homeless within a few months.
If you own your home you can stay in it for a few months (years!) before the bank manage to get you out… If you rent and suddenly lose your job you effectively lose your income.
In today’s reality most people have little or no savings to speak of, no significant assets and if you lose your income you have very little to fall back on immediately.
Of course you can get another job but this may not happen overnight. You can get social welfare but it wouldn’t be enough to cover rent in Dublin for example.. you can apply for rent allowance but many landlords won’t accept it because of abuse by tenants not passing on rent payments made to them by the state.
Overall, yes it is possible that you could be homeless quite quickly.. you may of course have savings, a chance to get a new job etc but if you lose income quickly it actually is a matter of a few months before you are potentially out in the cold so to speak.
If you lose your source of income and have a mortgage to pay as well as all the other essentials-bills and food where do you think the assistance is going to come from? The government no longer pay anything towards the cost of home loans if someone becomes unemployed-MIS (mortgage income supplement) was stopped as of January this year and this was not widely reported at all. Renters get support (and rightly so) but homeowners are left high and dry.
So you go to your mortgage company and do a SFS (standard financial statement). They take into account all income and expenditure and are the first to point out if you are spending on anything deemed unnecessary.
So after that they assess to see what you can afford to pay. I a lot of cases, social welfare only pays for bare minimum and doesn’t cover anything other than bills and clothes and food-there is no extra towards the cost of keeping a roof over your head.
And if you are deemed as unable to afford the repayments they are not allowed to ask you to pay anything. At which point your mortgage can and will be deemed as unsustainable soundless you have a good plan b or can manage to get financial help from family, you are going to lose your home. It happens every day and is only going to get worse imo.
So the 3 month time frame may be inaccurate but it’s really not much longer than that. So unless you can get a job (that pays similar to the previous job-good luck with that) quickly, it’s a slippery slope from there. Trust me.
Ok, we all have the potential to be homeless within 3 months.
Nicely put
The 3 months I mentioned above is a HSE statistic based on interviews with homeless people.
You’re going to have to boost some of these stories during the day, guys. It’s only the insomniacs and breakfast eaters browsing The Journal at 6-7am.
R people who have emigrated due to clowns running the country,
Breakfast eaters … You mean workers right ?
It’s a sad state of affairs that homelessness is still happening in a supposed first world country. The issues that homeless people experience and the brush they are painted with is tarnished by professional beggars and others who use people’s sympathy for the homeless as a way to milk people of there hard earned cash. Others so called charity’s that talk big but pay there CEO’s bigger annoy me as well.
Dublin Simon Community Fun run this Saturday in the Phoenix park.
A silly run for a serious cause.
Please support if you can
http://www.funrun.ie
Why would anybody give the notice of the Simon Community fun run red thumbs it beggars belief
Beggars belief? Intended pun?
Because homeless people should not have to depend on charity. The government should commandeer inactive sites in relevant areas and towns or tax them so that they can get money for homelessness. There should be rules about damage caused which will put you down the list if you break those rules, that way nobody gets a free ride on society.
They do tax owners of derelict sites.. or at least councils do so. This money goes to central funds for general work to those sites, or is swallowed up by General demands but not necessarily for fighting homelessn
Jesus lads 6 homeless stories one after the other. Can you not spread them out over a few days like you do for the immigrant council
Hi Trevor,
We are running a special in-depth series on the homelessness crisis all this week.
You can find out more about it here: http://www.thejournal.ie/homeless-ireland-series-the-journal-1693840-Sep2014/
We will post the stories together first thing each morning, so that those who are interested can find them easily. (And also, for people like yourself, who may not be interested so that you can scroll past them and read other morning news).
For those who are interested, they will also be available on a widget on our desktop site or from clicking here: http://www.thejournal.ie/homeless-ireland/news/
We really believe homelessness is at a major crisis point in Ireland – and not just in Dublin – so we’ve dedicated a lot of time, effort and resources to putting this series together this week. Just preparing you for the fact that there is a lot more to come, Trevor :)
Thanks, Susan, Editor, TheJournal.ie
Whereas the pro-immigrant lobby and Denise C get their daily propaganda story dropped in at intervals.
Susan, if you wonderful People at journal redesigned your app so that the red thumb button Is on the left there would be far less accidental red thumbs from right handed people scrolling. ..just a thought…will ye do it? Simple experiment.
Really isn’t the place Siobhan.
@siobhan o brien. If you press red in error, just repress it and it cancels the error vote.
No it doesn’t. I just red thumbed you to test it and you’re wrong :)
Why is updated then at 6.25pm and at the top of my screen again?
that’s true – I red thumbed you also to test it.
Rp , it doesn’t , you have to press the like button and that will knock off the other red one
No, if you press red in error, press the green and it’ll swap over!
Thanks susan. I too am interested in the homeless problem but imagine opening up a newspaper and finding the first six pages with nothing but the same story or parts of the same story on every page. The newspaper page planner would be sacked. Id be skipping every page no matter how important they were and head straight for the sports pages.
I just red thumbed to test it and he’s right!
Agreed!
On my phone it does but not on my laptop.
good point there Larry L’Oiseau, very good point. one week of this then its back to whats more important it seems. hmm yeah.
I’d like to congratulate TheJournal for taking the time and putting in so much effort to highlight and create the awareness that is constantly essential in tackling this problem.
Nobody ever deliberately chooses to be homeless. Nobody ever sets out to be an alcoholic or junkie.
Homelessness at the levels currently being recorded here is quite simply a symptom of the failure of society and the absence of meaningful political leadership. We have attempted to fix an economy by abandoning any notion of society, by punishing the poor, the sick, the disabled, the vulnerable for the actions of a financial elite most of whom aren’t even based or from Ireland. We have pursued Thatcherite logic in response to the economic treason committed by successive administrations and we are reaping the whirlwind now. These are people, human beings, who have simply been let down by everyone around them, their state, their families, their society and if we cannot provide meaningful help for them what is Ireland for? What is its value as a state or society?
So what are the homlessness levels then? Have you even a clue? Or you just have a selection of whines which can be wheeled out on any occasion.
Just under 4000 registered homeless on Census 2011 which is the last time the govt attempted to count – through a process that requires an address on night it was taken so clearly can’t include rough sleepers. Simon and Focus currently have over 5000 clients registered each but both they and Peter McVerry have reported a massive surge in those seeking homeless services in the last three years as do VDP etc etc. As much as you’d like this not to be a real problem it is and it is a direct result of a failure of government both at policy and implementation level (and due to a moral vacuum in FG/Labour IMO) and can only get worse in the face of rising rents and rising repossessions. Like it or not you can’t just pretend it doesn’t exist which is, as we know, the classic Irish solution to an Irish problem.
Maybe our own homeless could apply for asylum in Ireland. They’d be better treated anyway that’s for sure.
A country which has failed it’s citizens, when they needed the most help/ support for various reasons. F all houses for people, shit all $ being out into program’s to aid these people yet billions wasted on other countries or people entering the country (hey here’s $300 socialising money have a great time. Has a stigma to it some are their by choice 1% others didn’t chose this for themselves and to be honest people don’t want to know about it either. I left Dublin 20 odd years ago and as a kid I still remember the people on the streets nothing has changed nor it will (many thanks to those great people at the dail)
We have the means and the wealth to build new homes. We have vacant social housing. What we do not have is a Government that will stand up to the Banks and they refuse to regulate the housing market. There is a growing demand for long term tenancy, but most renters are at the mercy of the Landlord / market. We need standardization and regulation of the private rental market to protect all parties involved.
Homeless imo is when you haven’t a secure place to sleep and store some personal belongings.
It’s difficult to generalise when there are many reasons a person becomes homeless. There are two words that come to my mind- noble and free.
Some people become homeless by choice, some because of an incident, some because of abuse and some because of circumstance. There’s certainly more reasons than that.
I almost ended up on the streets a few years ago and I recall asking my local community officer for some help in difficult circumstances. Her reply was that I was a resourceful person and I could also go to the Vincent de Paul. It’s an attitude I have come across(there are exceptions) where g.o.’s in social welfare offices and health centres will bully and hammer you when the opportunity arises but not so great when a person needs a word of comfort or a kind ear.
We can’t have it both ways. On the one hand the state, in tandem with the banks and enabled by the the ECB’s loose monetary policies, is artificially driving up property prices to imitate a property boom.
On the other is the section of the population left behind when such misguided policies are enacted.
” Monetary policy is not about “stimulus” but about maintaining the status quo. Super-low interest rates are meant to sustain structures that would otherwise be revealed to be obsolete, and that would, in a proper free market, be replaced. The European establishment is interested in maintaining the status quo at all cost, and ultra-easy monetary policy and QE are essentially doing just that.”
Detlev Schlickter
Let’s raise taxes and buy them all houses whilst the average working families struggle to pay all their mortgages.
And when that family becomes homeless we can buy them a house too.
A person who doesn’t want to take a responsible part of society isn’t a citizen.
Yeah those kids born into homelessness, to Hell with them, clearly it’s their own fault. Grow up and learn what it means to be a real citizen.
It means noting. There are some people no matter what you do for them they will still want to sleep outside
The man who was burned to death in the Phoenix Park oddly enough had job and home yet chose to live rough for some reason.
For me homelessness means desperation, depression, mental illness, addiction (because really, in that scenario, any escape would be welcome, at least IMO), junkies (unfortunately a common reference by many).
And I suppose pretty unfair. We’re a developed nation that stll hasn’t figured out a system to either A) Get them back on the feet or at least B) Get them off the streets
“What words would you use to describe homeless people in Ireland?”
In Dublin at least, junkies, alcoholics, arseholes.
“Why do you think people become homeless?”
Because every chance they received to not be homeless anymore they have squandered. Also quite simply because none of their friends, family and nobody else in the country wants them in their gaff, if nobody wants you in their gaff you should question why that is.
Are you spouting from personal experience or just randomly, without base or reason?
Randomly, without base or reason of course =)
Not everyone on the streets were on drugs before they were homeless, iv read stories on here of people who lost their jobs and eventually their homes. Iv also read of people turning to drugs & alcohol to deal with having to live on the street. I took my two youngest to town on Saturday to a museum and they were more fascinated/shocked by the people sleeping on the street, iv never noticed so many before especially in day light or maybe it’s just become the norm to me which is awful to admit.
Many do have addiction or mental health issues and should be supported should they seek the help, it must be terrifying to lie in the cold/rain dark of night not knowing if you’ll be randomly attacked or that no one cares about you & can walk by or step over you. I also think its insane that at the end of my road there are 30-40 houses lying empty since I moved here in 2009 when they were built.
Preventable.
Cold. Afraid.
What word jumps into my mind when I see a homeless person – CHOICE
Vulnerability. Drugs. Drink..physical abuse..mental abuse.. Parental abuse..no job..no self esteem..poxy banks..depression..etc etc. All reasons why someone would be homeless…begging is just a way to fuel the habbit.
The state needs to build a large number of homes quickly and in the places where they’re needed as the utter market failure in this area has been catastrophic. Before we joined the Euro currency union, the government could simply create its own punt currency and spend it directly on the construction of social housing. Now we are constrained somewhat as our Euro membership prevents the Irish Central Bank from creating the new money directly but there are still finance options open to us. The councils could for example borrow directly from the commercial banks, specifically the ones in majority state ownership, in order to fund an extensive construction program to address the housing emergency. State agencies borrowing directly from the commercial banks is not prohibited under the current treaties of the EU. In addition, the banks should value this approach as loans to state institutions would be classified as the highest class of risk weighted asset under Basel 3 and so would help the banks meet higher capital adequacy ratios. The credit to the councils could take the form of long term loan contracts to be repaid over period of say 30 years. The terms and interest rates payable would be very favorable indeed as they would be ‘negotiated’ with the almost entirely state owned but nominally still private banks like AIB and PTSB. The newly built houses will generate a rental income stream for the councils which can be used to repay the construction finance loan contracts.
The first thing I see is the drugs and alcohol .. People lying in a heap on the streets etc , I knows it not the whole story but I step over junkies every day going to work
No home ,sleeping outdoors,cold.an empty cup looking for money.
Should it be a human right to have heat, clothing and sheather and food
How many bloody junkie zombies are annoying people today in dublin ?
Are our parents , kids . Tourists safe tonight?
Wasn’t the question what words? Despair, hoplessness anger at inadequate government.
Male
words to describe homeless. Junkie,lazy , dirty attention seeking wastes of space. Don’t pretend they are anything else, there is plenty of support. Get a job!
I an tired of people making me say words!
I was reading this article on homelessness within the US and came upon this,
A homeless person is more complex than the stereotype of a job-less, lazy person begging for change on the corner of the street. People become homeless for a variety of reasons, like being cut off from public assistance or losing a job. Homelessness can affect anyone at any time.
MISCONCEPTIONS
A homeless person is not necessarily a drug addict, a mentally-disabled person, or someone who lacks employment. Every homeless individual has his own life story and reason for becoming homeless. Many people equate homeless people with panhandlers but not all homeless people panhandle and not all panhandlers are homeless. All these traits are stereotypes, not realities, of the lives of people who are homeless. It’s not a condition or an illness. It’s a temporary situation anyone can fall into.
The journal is taking comments from other articles posting them to this.
Shockingly dishonest ‘journalism’.
FM , it’s the same topic so does it really matter that they are linking up the comments ?
What words? Drugs, drink, mental illness, laziness, hopelessness, begging, housebreaking, Christian kindness, waste of taxpayer’s money, hostels, wrecked social housing, etc.
Agreed E=mc2. Bang on the money. People wouldn’t have bleeding hearts if they were robbed, attacked, assaulted, abused by this part of society. They are in fact the ignorant collective part of society that have not had dealing with the part of life. Instead life in a bubble and play the petty violin.
you mark mentally ill off there amongst bad things like they did something wrong. you my friend have it all wrong and that stigma is obviously still amongst the masses no matter how pretentious their empathy is.
Paudi, the question was; what words do you associate with homelessness?
Mental illness is one of the words I associate with homelessness, no positive or negative overtone attached. E=MC2 is into logic and fact, not whatever emotional response happen to be in fashion at the moment.
Homeless means: end of the road,sadness,empathy,dirty, effects all backgrounds,survival of the fittest,let down by the system, cycle of their life.
Words to describe homeless: they are at rock bottom or could feel safer ten going home,alot of the homeless I see on a daily basis are addicts and it is getting much worse and it does feel unsafe as I do see so much happening in the city, I think some people on the streets are fearless too.
Why people become homeless job is gone,domestic violence,house taken away due to debit, addiction, not save at home parents could be violent or addicts,teenagers out of care at 18 and have nowhere to go,addicted to crime and prison.
i’d probably take my own life, as i have no faith in what little help thats out there at the moment, the rulers have it all wrong. pressure is mounting on many of us. enjoy your replacements, hope they take care of you, i really hope.
How many junkies are on our streets tonight ?
Are our parents safe kids ? Tourists?
Is this good for our Shops bars ?
What do the guards think of this , are they frustrated? Do they care ? Do we care ?
Jack what you said its very true but the people that have found themselves in that situation it is not their fault it’s the government’s and the bankers. Don’t be so quick to judge people as you might find yourself down on your luck one day. Remember this.
you’re wasting your time Linda with all these know it all a***holes and that they are.
I had a break down years ago so without my parents I could have ended up homeless and if they had died and I couldn’t care for myself the same could have happened, would have had house but no way to pay bills. Thankfully I was given the right meds for me.
The parenting in Ireland has a ‘ah sure they’re grand out there ‘playing” mentality – how many people know where their kids are? Mine are 20 & 17 and I still know where they are. They are not restricted by me in what they do they are just busy with school college p/t jobs hobbies.
We are out of control with binge drinking and it’s associated problems, again my kids don’t ‘drink’, one is obviously underage, the other will have A drink but doesn’t feel the need to end up with his head down the toilet.
I never tried drugs never felt the need too scared et etc same with my husband hopefully kids will be the same.
They aspire to getting good jobs, better than we got, due to better opportunities in education, possibly travel and see some of the world.
Boring some might say – pretty good I say
In all honesty homelessness is really sad… But when I see a comment that takes to thumb scrolls to get passed it I’m not reading that shit..
Capitalism
Keep hugging those trees hippy.
A lot of ignorant comments here how are there so many people on streets ok their are a number of reasons here ill list a few
They are drunks
Wen offered a place hostel etc the mess it up drink . , addiction
They are well organised groups that are professional beggars thieves ,
Heroine addicts in my view the are the worst sickest and most trouble I know they have issues and some deserve compassion but yet they are a scourge on our streets .
Mentally ill people who for whatever reason are not in care !we owe it to them as a state to care for them .
These addict centres across city they go in get there meds and back out to work the street.
Has anyone else any thoughts on this issue .
A few years back I’m ashamed to admit I had the ignorant belief that homelessness was a choice, people choosing to opt out of society, choosing alcohol, choosing drugs, choosing not to work. The sad fact is we are not all born to the same opportunities, every infant is born perfect and innocent but they are often born to people who don’t deserve them, people who neglect them and abuse them, people who cast them aside and make them so much more vulnerable and more likely to end up on the streets. We all have a government who choose to live in denial, who choose to gamble with its citizens welfare. We have a media who choose to wear blinkers, Garth Brooks; the biggest story of the year, while whole families move in to cars.
Living in Canada the last few years, there’s one elderly homeless man living in my area for a few years now. Talk to him now and again, asked him one day how he ended up like that and he told me his daughter cleaned him out, stole everything from him. Imagine that, he doesn’t cause anyone any harm and the local fast food places let him stay inside in the winter time.
Junkie, wino, borderline ratard, smell, stink, urine, dingle berry, begging, feces, useless, tramp, head lice, burden.
Your spelling is atrocious
Utter ranktard!!
2 stories on homelessness by the journal in the space of 7 hours….must be a slow news day !
In one word; unnecessary.
The temporary solution to homelessness is houses. The long term solution involves a complete overhaul of the mental health system. You could give each of these people 10 houses and leave them to it, but they’ll be on the streets again in no time. Between addiction, depression and the trauma of being on the streets themselves, every single one of them needs to be assessed and treated. They need help AFTER they get a roof over their heads too.
We also need to look at the fact that so many of these people feel cheated by the system. They have been failed since they were children, they don’t really trust anyone. Especially government services.
Drink,Drugs,Violence
As the popular saying goes on the journal
ONLY IN IREEEELAND
sorry thats all i am capable of saying
Put them on Islands eye
If u have all the homeless/asylum seekers/people unhappy with present council house a new house from these ghost estates how would they maintain them on job seekers r whatever allowance they’re on? Would ‘we’ be paying for their residence?
Can I tell the bank I’m ‘helping’ them with my taxes so I can’t afford my mortgage when dirty letters come through my letter box?
if only i could switch your brain over to an unwell person for about 3 months. their problems are theirs, yours are yours. don’t compare who’s is bigger than who’s. if they brought it on themselves, so did you taking out a loan. the bigger you get, the bigger the problems but let’s not compare.
have your say