In Drumcondra, a man puts off needed surgery as he faces into homelessness

Before the phone line was open, Gabriel Catanoiu had his mobile ready to dial. 

He made the call at 10am sharp.

“Your current position in queue is… ten,” says the automated voice. The line flicks back to flowing piano music.

Catanoiu put the phone down on the wooden table and lowered the volume. He was still ten, it told him again, and again, and again, the voice cutting through for a few seconds and switching back to muzak.

Until, “your current position in queue is… nine”. 

Thirteen minutes passed. It got to one, and Catanoiu readied himself to talk. His hand shook slightly.

“You are number 20 in the queue,” the voice said.

That happens sometimes when he calls Dublin Region Homeless Executive’s (DRHE’s) helpline for single homeless adults, he says. 

He finds himself back at the back of the waitlist of people calling in search of a place in a homeless hostel. He doesn’t know why it happens. “Sometimes, I wait an hour.” 

Catanoiu’s situation isn’t straightforward. 

He struggles with severe sciatica and complications. The back injury is the result of a fall during construction work putting vents in at a school, his last job. Injections haven’t helped, he says. The next step would be surgery. 

But he hasn’t been able to move on to that step, he says, because he wants to be sure he would have somewhere secure and suitable, somewhere accessible to recover. 

His time in the flat where he lives right now is ticking down. On paper, it’s over already.

In March 2024, he was served with an eviction notice by his landlord Xerico Limited – not through any fault, just a break clause kicked in. He had until 12 November 2024, but stayed.

He has tried to line up other options, he says.

Among them, emergency accommodation through DRHE, but really he needs a single and not shared room, and one that’s accessible, that doesn’t require him to stagger up and down stairs, he says. 

That hasn’t been offered though, he says.

Catanoiu doesn’t want to look demanding, he says. But he doesn’t want to risk messing up his recovery, he says, to risk even worse damage. So he is stuck, he says, growing more depressed, getting little sleep and still in pain.

DRHE said it wasn’t possible to respond before deadline to queries sent last Thursday asking how many single and how many shared rooms it has in its system. 

“There are both single and shared rooms but the majority of rooms are shared,” they said, on Tuesday.

They didn’t give details as to what the threshold is to get a single room. Staff carry out an assessment and review available beds when anybody contacts them for emergency accommodation, they said. 

“This assessment focuses on the individual’s specific needs, and the team considers several factors, including mobility requirements and the availability of suitable beds,” they said.

Trying all avenues

Catanoiu waits again for the queue to count down, this time from 20, until he reached the front of the line. 

“Hello, how can I help you?” said the operator. 

“My name is Gabriel,” he says. “I need your help because I am on a waiting list for a long time to get a single room. Can you help me please?”

“We have no single rooms available unfortunately,” said the operator.

“What can I do in the future? Because I already have one year and three months waiting for this room,” he says.

“Yeah, but we don’t have any single rooms,” said the operator. “We’ve got rid of most of our single rooms.”

He understands but they know his situation, Catanoui says, that he has a medical issue. He thanks the operator. He would call back again, he says.

Catanoiu has emailed to try to make another appointment to go in again in person to talk with placement services, he said, but they tell him he has to ring. 

On calls, he is told again and again that they don’t have a single room, he says. 

When he stops calling for a while and then tries again, the operators ask why he hasn’t called, he says. “If I ring, it’s not okay. If I don’t ring, it’s not okay.”

Catanoiu heads slowly back from the cafe to his studio flat. He turns one leg out slightly, as he walks.

At the back of the building, down a garden path, is a big garage. There’s a mattress pushed into a corner, covered in clear plastic. 

He slept here for a while, after his eviction date – which came around 15 months ago – passed, he says, as he hadn’t wanted to overstay in his studio. He kept paying his rent though, he says. He wanted to keep the address for letters.

Catanoiu has applied for new rentals, emails show – with no luck. He had an interview with a placement officer at DRHE in early November 2024, to line up homeless accommodation.

He is on the social housing list for three areas, but way down the bottom. He has applied for medical priority, with help from pro-bono solicitors. But the council has refused him that.

He hung tight in his flat, on Whitworth Road in Drumcondra. 

In May last year, he got a phone call from a council staff member to say that they had found him a place in homeless accommodation. It was in Maple House on North Circular Road.

But when he saw the room, he says, he turned it down. 

It was in the basement. He would need to go up and down stairs to get to a bathroom, which he struggled with now and wasn’t sure how that would be possible as he recovered from surgery. 

It also was shared, he says. He worried with his severe insomnia from his cocktail of medication, the stress, and pain, that he would anger any roommates as he moved around in the night. “But they don’t understand.”

He moved back into the studio, which was sitting empty, he says. Whether or not his landlord knew and considered that he had moved out or not is a point of dispute.

In October, he emailed the DRHE’s Central Placement Services (CPS). He had called, he says, but never heard back about any other place. 

Call the CPS line to talk about a placement, said the email response.

Catanoiu reattached his medical records. He would call, he replied. “Hope after one year in the road to get something proper for my health situation.”

“Please ring on Monday at 10am and he will try to source appropriate accommodation,” replied a council official.

Catanoiu hasn’t had another offer, he says. 

Hazel Chu, the Green Party councillor who chaired the previous council’s homelessness subcommittee – it hasn’t been set up again under the current iteration of the council’s housing committee – said she doesn’t know how many single rooms there are in the system.

But “I do know there is a shortage, because there was always a shortage of singles”, she says. 

There’s a shortage of accommodation full-stop, she says. The number of single adults in emergency accommodation in Dublin has risen from 3,194 in January 2022 to 5,036 in November 2025.

DRHE has been struggling with finding providers to open hostels outside of areas where there is already a concentration, says Chu, and there needs to be more available in different parts of the city. 

“There needs to be more in my area,” said Chu, who represents the Pembroke local electoral area, in the south-east part of the city.

But essentially, if what is available is not providing what is needed by people, then they need more of what is needed, she says.

The protocol

There is a protocol in place between DRHE and the HSE, covering how to plan to ensure suitable accommodation for those leaving hospital.

The DRHE’s Homeless Action Plan talks about it, and the need to “reduce discharge planning gaps”. 

The action plan also aims, it says, to “prevent households at Risk of Homelessness through provision of appropriate care and case management, supports, and taking account of specific needs arising from a diversity of service users”. 

But the protocol is really designed to support appropriate discharge from hospital, not sort accommodation before admission, said a HSE spokesperson.

“In general terms, where a person has significant mobility or medical needs, accommodation provided following a hospital admission should take these needs into account,” they said. 

“This is discussed with clients before they are discharged from hospital,” said the spokesperson. “Hospital social workers can bring specific cases to the attention of Central Placement Service (CPS) when they are working with a hospital medical team.”

But, “the protocol does not formally ‘activate’ where a person is delaying or avoiding surgery due to lack of suitable accommodation,” they said. 

Catanoiu doesn’t trust, he says, that the system would ensure him a place to recover. Can’t it be lined up before he schedules the surgery, he says.

A spokesperson for the HSE said that it couldn’t comment on particular cases.

But, “the operation of the protocol can often be constrained by available accommodation and in such circumstances both the DRHE, Local Authorities and hospitals will work in partnership to identify the optimal available accommodation,” they said. “Sometimes this is not ideal for the patient circumstances.”

There is on-going communication between these services about cases and needs and preferences, they said. “The protocol supports this continuing communication between the different services where challenges in sourcing accommodation arises.”

The Inclusion Health Teams (IHT), particularly the team’s social workers, are key to operating the homeless discharge protocol, they said. 

The HSE has Inclusion Health Teams in adult, paediatric and maternity hospitals in a number of major urban areas and referrals are rising, they said. “However, many of these teams are not yet operating fully due to vacancies within the teams.”

“The HSE will continue to progress improvements in the operation of the protocol, particularly by enhancing interagency collaboration to further strengthen its impact,” they said.

Catanoiu’s next hospital appointment is later this month, he says. Meanwhile, his landlord has filed a dispute at the Residential Tenancies Board against him for overholding.

As Catanoiu walks back down the garden path from the garage to the studio, he passes the windows of bedrooms in another flat in the building.

The apartment is empty, with white walls and new white mattresses and bedding wrapped in plastic.