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My life in a hotel room: Ireland’s hidden homeless crisis

/ My life in a hotel room: Ireland’s hidden homeless crisis

Video subtitles: My life in a hotel room: Ireland’s hidden homeless crisis

00:14
Laura, do you know where the bag with the antibiotics is?
00:17
Oh, here.
00:22
That’s one antibiotic.
00:27
Don’t know where the room key is.
00:31
Nuala and her daughter Laura are homeless.
00:34
For the last two weeks,
00:35
this hotel room has been their home.
00:38
I can never find this.
00:41
There is no normality.
00:45
It's the not knowing, the uncertainty,
00:47
the insecurity, despair.
00:50
What is going to become of you.
00:52
Then failure.
00:54
Inadequate parent.
00:56
And it just spirals out of control.
01:01
Getting up in the morning, getting ready,
01:06
that in itself you have to deem as an achievement
01:09
and sort of say, 'OK, well, you've done it today.'
01:15
More than 9.700 people across Ireland are living like this,
01:19
in emergency accommodation.
01:27
Now my daughter goes to college,
01:30
I make a point of getting up and dropping her in
01:33
because I would hate to think what I would become if I didn't have that focus.
01:39
Right, see you at two-ish.
01:42
Love you lots, take care.
01:45
Nuala’s landlord was forced to sell by his creditors,
01:47
an increasingly common situation in Ireland following the financial crisis.
01:52
She was told with only three months' notice to find a new place to live.
01:57
OK, the U Store is here on the left,
01:59
that’s where all our belongings are stored
02:02
until we finally get somewhere to call home.
02:06
In reality, it slaps you in the face.
02:11
This was our life, this was our home.
02:13
And now we have neither.
02:16
This one here.
02:22
There’s something in the letterbox.
02:27
Yep.
02:29
And there’s no one in it … we could have been still there.
02:38
Oh my God.
02:44
There’s an envelope in there, I hope it’s not Laura’s bank account stuff.
02:49
How long were you living here?
02:51
Nine and a half years. Strange that I can't go in.
02:56
I was sort of half expecting to see blinds down, for sale sign up.
03:01
But no, it’s lying empty.
03:05
You know, gosh.
03:06
Are you angry?
03:08
No, you do get past that stage.
03:11
You just become, I suppose, numb.
03:14
And just go ... what could have been, what might have been.
03:17
You know, there was no need for me to be out so soon.
03:22
So I don't know what the delay is in putting it up for sale,
03:25
but I'm not angry.
03:28
When they first registered as homeless six weeks ago,
03:31
the council placed Nuala and Laura in various hostels on a night by night basis.
03:37
Here we go.
03:40
Thank you for calling Dublin city council’s self-accommodation line for hotel bookings.
03:45
Please hold. Thank you.
03:48
Their hotel placement is more secure, but Nuala has to call every two weeks,
03:52
to reapply for their room.
03:54
Your current position in the queue is seven.
03:59
Seven?
04:08
Your current position in the queue is seven.
04:11
Could be on seven for 20 minutes!
04:16
Hello.
04:17
Yeah, that booking has been confirmed there for you, OK?
04:22
Happy days, thank you so much.
04:24
No problem.
04:24
Have a good day, bye.
04:29
Done, two weeks.
04:31
Yeah, thumbs up!
04:33
I'd rather have a home!
04:41
There is a chronic shortage of social housing in Ireland.
04:44
Governments just haven't been building council houses.
04:48
As an alternative,
04:49
authorities offer a housing assisted payment scheme called HAP,
04:53
under which councils pay rent to private landlords.
04:57
Nuala qualifies for HAP but under the terms of the scheme, it's her responsibility
05:02
to find a home to rent on the open market.
05:04
And in Ireland today,
05:05
those are few and far between.
05:09
Every day she goes to the library to search for properties and apply for viewings.
05:14
It’s a nightmare.
05:15
It's an absolute nightmare.
05:18
All you want is just that one person to say,
05:21
'I'm going to give these two girls a chance.'
05:25
Would you have a computer free?
05:26
Just over there, number C4.
05:29
C4. Great, thank you so much.
05:31
She sends out at least five applications a day.
05:35
But in five months,
05:36
she's had no luck.
05:38
Rental properties are so in demand that few even make it to a public viewing.
05:42
Your confidence takes a battering every single time.
05:46
And there's only so many times you can be knocked down and you can’t get back up.
05:51
But if you don't apply, you won’t know.
06:03
Roger Berkeley has been an estate agent in Dublin for 40 years.
06:08
I have never seen it this chronic for tenants in how difficult it is to find a home.
06:15
I’ve never seen it as it is now.
06:18
Even though the rents have gone up, they’re sky rocketing,
06:22
rents that would have been €1,200 a month five years ago,
06:25
they’re now over €2,000 a month.
06:27
What would you say are the causes of this current crisis?
06:31
Lack of supply of houses or properties or apartments
06:36
for the increasing number of tenants that are coming to the market.
06:40
We’re coming up to a house in Palmerstown that we recently let.
06:45
So this house here, was this like a exemplary case of how the rental market works at the moment?
06:50
Homeless HAP?
06:51
Yeah, and that was a house that went for €2,000 a month.
06:54
This is the one thing about homeless HAP,
06:56
you can have last year’s professionals are this year's homeless HAP sometimes.
07:03
It's like putting a Band-Aid on an open wound,
07:05
it's shovelling money at a problem, it's not solving the problem.
07:08
The problem is going to be solved
07:09
by more housing being available for tenants, I think.
07:14
A succession of Irish governments has relied on private developers to construct the country's social housing,
07:20
but the private sector has failed to deliver.
07:24
Are you on a waiting list for a council house?
07:27
I am. I've been on it now
07:31
I would say seven years
07:33
and I'm listed in around the 600 mark.
07:41
So possibly another six or more years.
07:48
Nuala is one of more than 70,000 people on a waiting list for a council house.
07:53
But despite the huge demand, this current government has built fewer than 500 homes
07:58
since it was elected in 2016.
08:01
When this government formed in May 2016, priority number one was to deal
08:05
with the housing situation at that time.
08:07
We recognise that you can't fix the housing supply issue overnight,
08:11
so we put together a five-year plan,
08:13
which we launched in August 2016.
08:16
But according to that plan that’s 85% of the total of new social housing
08:21
is actually going provided by the private sector until 2021.
08:24
Our commitment to that plan is that with a 6bn spend of taxpayers' money,
08:28
is to deliver 50,000 new social houses.
08:32
Do you agree that the solution to the housing crisis
08:35
is for the government and the local authorities to be building more housing?
08:40
Absolutely and that's exactly what we're doing.
08:43
You've got 1,300 families in Dublin alone currently in emergency accommodation
08:47
which means moving from hotel room from night to night or week to week.
08:50
So we’re trying to make sure that those people spend a very short time
08:53
in that emergency accommodation,
08:54
then move on to a more permanent house and that can be
08:56
a rented house or a purpose-built house, but what they want is a house.
09:00
Literally every week we have a housing discussion, housing meeting,
09:02
to make sure we stick to our plans of investing taxpayers' money
09:06
in new social houses and that’s what we’re doing.
09:08
Built by the government and not by developers?
09:10
Built by the government, yes.
09:11
There’s a combination of ways of building houses.
09:14
This department doesn’t physically go out and put the blocks together.
09:16
Naturally you pay builders to do that.
09:18
But it's state money building state houses that the state will own.
09:23
While Ireland waits for these promised houses to be built,
09:26
there’s little option for the almost 10,000 people
09:30
squeezed out of the private rental market and into hotels and hostels,
09:34
but to wait and hope.
09:37
How are you feeling? Are you able to sleep?
09:39
I'm on medication, antidepressants and anti-anxiety.
09:42
Without those,
09:44
I wouldn't have that baseline of normality.
09:49
And really, it's not healthy to be living in this environment.
09:54
And it certainly isn't healthy for your child to witness a parent
10:00
who’s supposed to keep her safe and secure,
10:04
is now lacking in self-confidence and motivation.
10:10
Oh my God.
10:13
There's always that knot in your stomach.
10:16
That never leaves you.
10:19
You know, the people in reception know you're homeless.
10:23
And you're wondering how they perceive you.
10:26
Go on, go for a paddle Babs!
10:30
Ew, Mammy touched me, Mammy cooties!
10:34
You do feel that bit of stigma that is attached with that word 'homeless'.
10:39
You automatically assume
10:41
a rough sleeper, a down and out,
10:44
someone who may be addicted to drugs or alcohol or gambling.
10:48
You don't expect it to be just normal people.
10:52
Okie dokie, Babs.
11:02
You alright?
11:04
It’ll be fine, don’t get upset.
11:08
We’ll be grand.
11:13
The homeless charity Focus Ireland has been helping Nuala and Laura
11:17
since they were first made homeless.
11:19
They've put them on a shortlist of families to be considered for a flat which is being offered
11:23
exclusively to HAP tenants.
11:25
This is the problem I had last week trying to bloody locate it.
11:29
This is the second time the charity has put them forward for a flat in this block,
11:33
they missed out on the last one.
11:35
So do we have to park over here? Oh, is he looking for it?
11:38
Oh God, could be.
11:40
That’s, he was here last week with her!
11:43
So we’re all early.
11:44
We’re not good enough, obviously.
11:47
Come on Babs, let’s boogie baby.
11:49
Here we go again.
11:54
Looks nice.
11:55
It's a bigger block.
11:57
Like you're afraid to get your hopes up
12:02
but I suppose we have to have some sort of hope.
12:06
So fingers crossed.
12:09
Can I get back in the car?
12:11
'Can I get back in the car!'
12:12
I'm cold!
12:13
Get back in the car. There you go.
12:15
Thank you.
12:20
Just somewhere to call home,
12:24
somewhere you can cook and wash.
12:34
Yeah, hopefully.
12:37
Hopefully.

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