“I’m not allowed visitors,” Jessica Molloy explains over the phone, “It’s like a prison cell”.
She sends photos and footage of her room, showing a steel bunkbed against a wall and a blow up mattress on the floor. A bathroom light flickers and hums constantly in the background, while belongings and clothes are stacked in corners and on chairs.
Molloy has been living in a hostel in Dublin’s north inner city since May, with two of her three children aged under 14.
Before that, her family of four lived in a two-bed council flat in Dublin 1 for more than a decade until it became “unbearable” due to antisocial behaviour and drug-related intimidation in the complex and wider area.
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The “final straw” was receiving a white envelope through her letterbox. Inside the envelope, she found a single bullet.
“I threw it on the ground,” she says, adding: “Obviously, it wasn’t connected to me. I rang the police straight away, I was in hysterics, I was petrified.”
On top of this, she says the flat was old, damp and overcrowded.
“My son never had his own bedroom, he was sleeping with me for the last three years,” she says.
She ultimately presented herself as homeless to Dublin City Council at the end of July in 2024, but was asked to stay with family or friends as there was no accommodation immediately available.
“My three children and myself shared a bedroom with my mam.”
The family of four waited for news for nine months, she says, all the while staying with her mother until it was no longer sustainable.
She returned to the council in May, “demanding” somewhere for her family to sleep and was offered the hostel room.
Her teenage son, who was significantly affected by their housing circumstances, has remained with his grandmother, she says, while her two daughters get “a little bit of a break” by staying there on the weekends.
“My son still needs his own bedroom, he’s sharing a single bed with my 72-year-old mother,” she says.
Molloy must be inside the hostel by 9.30pm seven nights a week in order to keep it. She says nights alone there are “soul-destroying”.
Their room is at the back of the building, and receives no sunlight, she says, describing it as a “dungeon”.
“It’s very small. How do you expect a family of four with two teenagers to actually be there every single day? It’s impossible,” she says.
Her daughters “hate it” and are “embarrassed” about their living circumstances, she says.
“One cries every time she comes.
“They’re falling asleep in school sometimes because they can’t get a good night’s sleep.”
Speaking during her lunch break, the 45-year-old hairdresser originally from Summerhill in Dublin questions how much is spent on accommodating families in such spaces.
In total, €1.84 billion has been spent on providing emergency accommodation between 2013 and 2024. This expenditure, the vast majority of which is paid to private for-profit providers, has grown significantly over that period.
In 2013, about €11 million was paid to private providers, which represented just under 40 per cent of all spending on emergency accommodation. By 2024, this had risen to just over €270 million or 75 per cent of all spending.
Of the €1.84 billion spent since 2013, private providers received nearly €1.2 billion, according to a report published by Focus Ireland and Trinity College Dublin.
The Government has signalled an intent to shift towards State-owned emergency accommodation, notes Focus Ireland advocacy director Mike Allen.
“We have mixed feelings about that,” he adds, saying: “What does it say about the ambition for solving the problem if you are now going to invest in permanent infrastructure of homeless accommodation?”
“We certainly wouldn’t be attacking it as a measure because we recognise the pressure people are under,” he says. However, he believes spending would be better directed towards social housing allocations and homelessness prevention.
He highlights “definite issues” surrounding the quality of some accommodation currently used through private providers, some of which are “very poor and very small”.
This is alongside “restrictive” rules faced by those accommodated in some sites.
Currently completing a course in child psychology, Molloy says it has “opened my eyes to how much this is going to affect my children” due to the importance of a safe and stable home.
“It’s breaking my heart,” she says, adding that her own mental health has “plummeted”.
“I would have been quite a glamorous person, as a hairdresser. I haven’t worn makeup, and some days, I feel like I don’t even want to wash myself.”
Molloy says she has “done everything” possible to get a home but was told it could be two years before she is housed.
“Our whole life has been turned upside down. I can actually understand now why some people fall into addiction in these places,” she says.
Molloy’s family was one of 1,732 to be housed in emergency accommodation in Dublin in September, according to the latest figures available. That same month, 43 families exited emergency accommodation in Dublin, though 99 new families entered for the first time.
The Housing Crisis & Me series
- Part one: ‘There’s no other option’: Leitrim woman’s commute went from six minutes to six hours
- Part two: Couple apply to build log cabin after failing to find rented home within €1,600 monthly budget
- Part three: ‘Is it really worth this much?’: How costs spiralled on a couple’s derelict home renovation
