“Disgusting” and “disgraceful” are two words Susan Reynolds recalls hearing from passersby while she lived in a tent on Dublin’s Grafton Street.
“Unfortunately, I would have become accustomed to how they actually view people. They wouldn’t be indirect, they’d be straightforward. They would say it’s ‘disgraceful’ or ‘they should be ashamed of themselves’,” she says.
Ms Reynolds resorted to living in a tent three years ago after spending about five years in emergency accommodation, she says.
The 35-year-old woman from Darndale, north Dublin, now lives in Drumcondra as a tenant of mental health housing charity Hail, while also studying for a Level 8 degree in psychology at University College Dublin (UCD).
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“It was harsh,” she says, recalling one incident in particular in which a group of teenagers kicked her tent, and “messed around” before falling on top of it while she was inside trying to sleep.
“One of them turned around and said they were going to set it on fire,” she says, describing the encounter as “a bit scary”.
“It does away with your dignity a little bit, they view you as something of a piece of trash, to be brutally honest,” she says.
Ms Reynolds recalls sleeping across the street from a man, also sleeping rough, who showed her “how to survive”.
Alongside warning her of certain areas or groups to avoid, he showed her how to pass the time during the day, by going to certain parks, homeless day services, libraries or cafes where she could sit in peace.
“There are some people who are very good,” though stereotypical views or generalisations of homeless people remain, she says.
Living on her own since the age of 18, she previously worked in customer service and caring roles, though she moved around “an awful lot”, she says, and ultimately found herself homeless in her late 20s.
The three hostels in which she lived during that period were “challenging environments”, where she witnessed open drug taking and violence. “You come up against a lot of different issues, there is an awful lot of mental health issues, alcohol addiction, drug addiction.”
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Asked if she ever felt unsafe, she says: “I don’t think there’s a safety element in living in those places, not to diss the work they do, I’m sure they do incredible work.
“We were on top of each other,” she says, explaining that she eventually chose to live in a tent rather than remain in emergency accommodation.
“I was thrust into the really severe end of things,” she says.
Despite spending years in emergency accommodation before resorting to living in a tent on arguably Ireland’s busiest street, she never lost hope that she would someday have a roof over her head.
She was eventually referred to Hail, a charity that provides housing and supports to those with mental health difficulties.
Hail assisted a record 694 people in 2023, recently warning that additional funding was required from the Government to sustain the expansion and current level of services it provides.
Ms Reynolds described the day she received the keys to her own apartment three years ago as “the happiest day of my life”.
In that space of time, she has returned to education, initially achieving a Level 5 in counselling and psychology before beginning a Level 8 degree in psychology. “My life has completely turned around,” she says.
She also provides individual and group peer support to other Hail tenants through a service run by volunteers who have lived experience of mental health difficulty.
Now, when Ms Reynolds regularly walks past where her tent once stood on Grafton Street, she says it is “just another place”.
“It doesn’t bring up painful memories, it doesn’t bring up positive memories even though there are some,” she says, though “I never forget where I actually came from.”
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