‘It can happen to anybody’: Limerick woman (54) on her shock at becoming homeless

Helen McInerney (54) didn’t abuse drink or drugs, and she always paid her bills, but now she sleeps in a homeless shelter, alone, after her landlord sold her rented family home on the private market.

Helen’s sudden plunge into homelessness, which split her from her daughter and her grandchildren, splintering them into separate emergency homeless shelters, has been “horrible” and “heartbreaking”.

After living out of a hotel room, she has for the past six months been staying at the Temporary Emergency Provision accommodation centre run by the charity Novas in Limerick.

However, the shelter’s house rules, similar to that of an emergency family hub where her daughter and grandchildren now languish, does not permit visits.

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Holding back tears, and sitting in her lonely surroundings, hugging a teddy bear belonging to one of her grandchildren, Helen says: “I have nowhere to meet my grandchildren, so now we meet on the street corners of Limerick city. It’s devastating.”

[ Number of homeless children in State reaches record 3,904 in September ]

Homelessness, Helen warns, “can happen to anybody – people don’t realise it. Until it happens, you are clueless. I always thought, That’s definitely not me, sure why would it come and knock on my door?”

She has engaged with Limerick city and county council’s housing department, and completed all the necessary paperwork in order to apply for an affordable home for her and her family, but, “it’s just that there are no properties out there”.

In its 2022 annual report, published on Friday Novas warned that “fewer” people were able to access its temporary homeless accommodation in Limerick and Dublin last year because of the “protracted length of time people spent living there”.

Painting a stark outlook heading into next year, Una Burns, head of Novas policy and communications, says: “Temporary and emergency homeless accommodation is designed for six months or less, but what we are finding now is that many of our residents are living in services for years.”

[ Number of homes available to rent under HAP scheme limits at lowest level on record ]

Una Deasy, Novas chief executive, says “a lack of one-bed units, in particular”, had made exit pathways from homelessness “extraordinarily difficult” and that access to emergency accommodation was being “blocked” by “single adults” who were “too long stuck” in the temporary system.

Novas said the number of women able to access its temporary accommodation services in Dublin dropped from 333 to 224 between 2014 and 2022, “despite more than doubling capacity during the same period”.

It also noted that accessibility at its Limerick centre dropped from 320 in 2018 to 181 last year.

Despite her ordeal, Helen is hopeful that she will one day again “be able to cook for my grandchildren, and be a meaningful part of their lives”.

Novas launched eight one-bed apartments on Newenham Street in Limerick city – the first Georgian redevelopment nationally to achieve a A3 Ber rating, built by Shineline Limited – to allow people a path out of homelessness.

Roy Finn (56), from Moyross, Limerick, who has spent the past 20 years in and out of homeless services, says being offered one of the eight apartments was “like winning the lotto”.

“I’m finally in my own place now, I know there are still people from Novas that I can call on, but just to have my own independence is important.”