Jasmine Graham contacted Dublin City Council months in advance of her eviction. But she was told again and again that no emergency accommodation was available.
In the weeks and months before the winter eviction ban was lifted, Graham – whose eviction date was 15 April – struggled to get an appointment with the council, she says.
She appealed to the council to place her and her two young boys in emergency accommodation before Christmas, when she thought her original eviction date of 20 December 2022 still stood, emails show.
“Please, I’ve nowhere to go when this eviction is up,” she recalls saying.
She kept contacting the council between December 2022 to April 2023, she says. But council staff kept saying there was no emergency accommodation available, says Graham.
They suggested she stay with friends and family, and find someone to mind her children. One staff member asked her if she could sleep in her car, she says.
Eventually, three days before she had to be out, Graham broke down crying in the council offices, she says, and pleaded for help. “I was panicking.”
She thought she would have to put her children into care and sleep rough, she says. “I honestly thought I would have to call Tusla on myself because I was going to be on the streets.”
Finally, council staff placed the family in a B&B.
But Graham thinks that this system of allocating homeless accommodation – making her push again and again, and batting her back as many times, before she and her children were given somewhere to stay – is just wrong.
“Do I really have to go in there, to beg and degrade myself just to get a B&B?” she says by phone on 25 April.
In February, independent Councillor Noeleen Reilly asked the council’s chief executive, Owen Keegan, what extra accommodation would be brought online to help deal with the expected increase in homelessness, when no-fault evictions kicked in again.
Dublin City Council had plans to open 1,250 new beds in emergency accommodation for families by the end of June, said a written response from Keegan.
A council spokesperson said this week that the council has opened some beds already and is engaging with owners of 25 new properties.
The Dublin Region Homeless Executive monitors the need for emergency accommodation closely, said the spokesperson. “And will put in place additional emergency accommodation as required.”
But the rest of Keegan’s written response casts doubt on whether enough will open to cater to all those who will need it in the coming months.
“It is anticipated the availability of new [emergency accommodation] for families will contract and becoming [sic] increasingly difficult, in the second half of 2023,” wrote Keegan.
Accommodation for single adults is also expected to reach “a serious pinch point” in the second half of 2023, he wrote.
A Serious Mistake
Graham got an eviction notice for her rented one-bedroom apartment in 2021 because of overcrowding.
It was after her second child, she said. The landlord was able to evict on grounds of health and safety, says Graham.
She got various reprieves during the pandemic. But a valid notice to quit gave her an eviction date of 20 December 2022. In November 2022, council staff told Graham she had secured a permanent council home in Chancery House, she says.
Council staff advised her how much her rent would be and told her that once she paid two weeks’ rent in advance she could sign for the property, emails show.
Graham says she was concerned about damp. But she was going to accept the home because the alternative, she says, was likely homelessness.
Then the council staff member went quiet. Resurfacing, they told her there had been a mix up. She hadn’t gotten the place after all.
“I was offered a place through choice-based lettings and then I was told that was a mistake,” she says.
The council told her in early December that she could stay in her one-bed for a few more months because of the October evictions ban, she says.
She knew the family was facing homelessness and tried to put on a brave face for the sake of her kids, she says. “I was trying to give them a decent Christmas but I actually felt suicidal.”
One of her sons has special needs and doesn’t have good safety awareness, she says, so she needs to try to provide him with a stable home.
From January until days before her eviction date of 15 April, Graham rang the council repeatedly, she says.
Council staff said there was no emergency accommodation available, and that she should go and stay with friends or relatives, she says.
“Anybody I know wouldn’t have enough room for me and the kids,” says Graham. Her father lives in a housing complex for people aged over 55 and children aren’t allowed to stay there, she says.
Her friends all live in private-rental homes. Moving in with them would overcrowd the property and wouldn’t be permitted by the landlord, says Graham. “If I went to stay with friends then they could get into trouble.”
Her own tenancy was terminated in the first place due to overcrowding, she says.
Graham’s story is by no means unique. Councils have been advising people to stay with friends and family instead of offering them emergency accommodation, says Mike Allen, director of advocacy with Focus Ireland.
“We’re still seeing quite pro-active pushback from local authorities,” says Allen.
Families have to really push their cases to get offered emergency accommodation, he says.
Meeting a Growing Demand
If the council were to open all 1,250 new beds mentioned in February, and filled them, it would mean a major increase in official homelessness figures.
At the end of February, there were 4,584 people living in emergency accommodation for families in the Dublin region.
Many of those taking up beds may, of course, be already homeless – just unofficially. In other words, they’re just not counted.
Some of those beds have opened already. “New emergency accommodation for families has opened since February, with more coming on stream incrementally,” said a Dublin City Council spokesperson on Tuesday.
The council is negotiating with owners of 25 new properties, he says, and is in competition with other state agencies for buildings.
There are competing requirements for emergency accommodation for asylum seekers and Ukrainian refugees, said the spokesperson. “But to date this has been managed successfully.”
Another Pinch Point
Keegan also wrote in his response in February that the council planned to open 100 new beds for individuals – those without children – in the first three months of 2023. But he also still warned of a pinch point for adding new beds.
Between February 2022 and February 2023 single homelessness in the Dublin region surged by 23 percent from 3,256 people to 4,004.
Louisa Santoro, CEO of the Mendicity Institution, a homeless day centre, says the council is actively discouraging single people from accessing homeless services.
They do that by moving them to inferior accommodation, reducing the length of time they are placed in a hostel, adding bureaucracy or citing the local-connection criteria, she says.
The council asks people to produce payslips, proof of previous addresses and lots of other paperwork, she says. “It’s all over the phone and there isn’t a proper meeting.”
Councils often advise people to return to another county in which they previously lived, she says, but then that other council doesn’t offer the person accommodation either.