Council opened post and entered apartment when tenant out, housing campaigner claims

A woman whose experience of homelessness politicised her into involvement in a housing action campaign has criticised Dublin City Council for its treatment of the homeless. Tamara Kearns claimed that the council treated those with housing difficulties like the "smallest person they can make you feel".

Ms Kearns, who has organised protest marches at City Hall and Leinster House, said: “People who are already at an all-time low, the council is making them more vulnerable, more and more down, the little people of society.”

The 25-year-old mother of two became homeless when her family fell behind with the rent, and remained so from October last year until July this year. “My daughter changed schools three times,” she said. “She’s six. Her education at the moment is very low for her age. This is what happens to people in homeless facilities.”

Ms Kearns was speaking from the floor during a conference on homelessness organised by Impact trade union. A delegate who works for the council rebutted her claims and said that the council worked very hard on dealing with homelessness and treated people with respect

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No privacy

Ms Kearns said, however, that, “we had people walk into our apartment when we were in temporary accommodation when we weren’t there”.

She added that “when we were there, they assumed that they could just come in and not have to ask permission. We had our post opened. We had a curfew. We had no visitors allowed. This is what we had to face. My children had nowhere to play.”

She said that “we were also placed on the opposite side of the city to where we were from. We had no family around. We had no car. My husband was cycling to work, from Crumlin to Glasnevin. Dublin City Council didn’t care where we were, didn’t want to know who we were.”

Ms Kearns is part of Housing Action Committee, a group that is active in Ballymun and Blanchardstown and is establishing a branch in the city centre to “mobilise people to start fighting” for housing.

Her family has now been housed in Clare Village, on Malahide Road. “My husband is working now in a new job, and things are starting to look good for us,” she said.

Nothing being done

Peter McDonagh, homeless for four years, told the conference that nothing was being done to address the problem of homelessness for single people.

“There’s no respect from anybody,” he said. “Walking into Parkgate [Dublin City Council’s central placement service] or Fingal, you get no respect. Walking down the road, if people know you’re homeless, there’s no respect.”

“We’re chased by the social welfare constantly,” he added. “We’ve to go up and sign on weekly just to prove that we still have an address.

“[But] we don’t have an address. We have a hostel. There’s 38 people in the hostel and it’s meant to be a move-on hostel. In the last four months, nobody in the hostel has been moved on.”

Speaking later, Mr McDonagh said he became homeless “through a dodgy landlord”, who, he claimed, kicked him out and kept his deposit.

Mr McDonagh said he had had mental-health issues and found it harder to get work once he was made homeless. He said he was an activist with the Socialist Workers Party and People Before Profit.