Accommodation crisis in Tipp

Over 100 people in Tipperary reporting as homeless sought help from Tipperary County Council last month as a sense of desperation over lack of accommodation is now emerging.

Some of those reporting as homeless say that emergency accommodation in the Nenagh Municipal District is at crisis point, forcing at least one young woman with three small children in Ballina to consider resorting to sleeping in a car with her offspring.

Another young Nenagh native, a single mother of an infant fleeing domestic abuse, said she was “stranded” in a town 20 miles away, having no option but to stay in the cramped accommodation after a friend put her up.

Nenagh councillor Seamus Morris says he has information that suggests that as many as 166 people have presented to the council in the past month who said that they are homeless.

In an email to the council’s Housing Department, Cllr Morris says: “I know the staff are doing their best, but is it not time to call a crisis meeting in terms of housing so that we can announce a crisis.”

In order to tackle the problem he says that the Government needs to apply the same emergency legislation being used to house Ukrainian refugees to other people who are homeless.

WORKING HARD

The local authority said last week that it currently has 80 people accommodated in various forms of emergency accommodation throughout the county, such as bed and breakfast and other transitional types of accommodation. “We are working hard to support them,” it said.

Over recent weeks this newspaper has been contacted by a number of young mothers saying they are “homeless”.

They claim that the council has failed to provide them or their children with accommodation within the Nenagh Municipal area.

One young woman who had been living and working in Nenagh told this newspaper that due to domestic abuse she was homeless since becoming pregnant.

Her situation had forced her to quit her job and she was currently “stranded” in cramped accommodation 20 miles from the town.

She says she sleeps on a two-seater couch in the “tiny” sitting room of a friend’s house. Her one-year-old baby sleeps on a blow-up mattress on the floor beside her.

She said she had been told by the council that a lot of hotels and bed and breakfast establishments did not wish to provide emergency accommodation because people were damaging properties and causing other problems.

She said she did not have any history of antisocial behaviour and had provided character references to the council, but still failed to get accommodation in Nenagh.

DESPERATE

The young woman said: “I’m just genuinely desperate and don’t want my child to grow up in homelessness.

“It’s a catch-22 because I can’t return to employment without an address, and I can’t get a landlord to accept me when they hear I’m unemployed.

“This has wreaked havoc on my mental health. My one-year-old is the only reason I’m staying going, but I feel completely defeated and dehumanised.

“I don’t know what to do anymore. I was told I could be on the waiting list for years, and I don’t know what I’ll do if that’s the case.”

Ascend, the domestic abuse service for women, have written to the council about the plight of the woman and her child, supporting her application to secure social housing.

“I have been told in the last two homeless clinics there is no longer emergency accommodation, and there’s now a [waiting] list for such accommodation – even if you’re on the street,” the woman, in her early 20s, told The Guardian.

She said she had been previously employed in the Nenagh area. “But I can’t work at the moment due to the severity of my homelessness, and I’m stranded 20 miles from the town on a two-seater couch with a baby, and I can’t be here longer than a month,” the woman stated.

She added: “The public need to know there is currently no emergency accommodation for homeless children and this is how bad things are. It’s scandalous.”

BALLINA CASE

Another woman in her early 20s with three young children in Ballina also made contact with The Guardian. She said she has had to consider living in a car due to the crisis.

“I’ve been homeless for over a year going from house to house staying in small box bedrooms with all my kids. I haven’t been helped one bit by the council. I’ve been into the council multiple times and there saying there’s nothing they can do for me; they can’t give me homeless accommodation.”

She said her eldest child has epilepsy and a newborn son suffered from respiratory distress after he was born with a collapsed lung.

The woman, who on first contact with this newspaper said she was about to resort to living in a car with her children, has since been accommodated on an emergency basis by a relative. She said she feels ignored by the council.

In a response to Cllr Morris, the council said people were presenting to them as homeless for various reasons.

It said it had five clinics each week in Nenagh, Thurles and Clonmel where its homeless team work with people to prevent them becoming homeless, or assist them to secure Housing Assistance Payments (HAP).

It said that in cases of family breakdown, it was working with homeless people and their families to resolve the issue until they could source alternative accommodation.

Where tenants presented to the council as emergency cases after receiving notices to quit, the council said it was liaising with landlords to see if they can extend the tenants stay for a period. “If we are in a position to purchase the property we will,” the council stated, adding that it had purchased 72 such properties since June of last year.

The council said it was only in exceptional cases that it accommodated people in emergency accommodation such as bed and breakfast establishments. This only happened “where all other options have been exhausted”.

“Our homeless team has built up a good relationship with landlords across the county and where there are vacancies, they will approach us,” the council stated.

The council did point out to Cllr Morris that there is limited private rental accommodation available and those presenting as homeless “need to be in a position to consider housing assistance payments outside of their preferred area”.

It added: “We currently have 80 people in forms of emergency accommodation…and we are working hard to support them.”

In reply to concerns by Cllr Morris, the council said there was no nine-week limit in force in relation to the provision of emergency accommodation “if individuals are engaging and are genuinely considered homeless”.