‘I have to believe that this situation is not forever’: stress mounts in homeless parents and children living in claustrophobic one-room accommodation

“When I came here from Poland 12 years ago, I came to make my situation better,” explains Kasia*. “I didn’t plan on being homeless,” says the 31-year-old Mum of one. “I didn’t imagine that myself and my daughter Karolina* (now 8) would have been struggling with homelessness in some form or other for seven years.”

Over this time, Kasia and Karolina have periodically relied on short-term sanctuary with friends as well as renting small rooms with strangers in different areas around Dublin until they found an apartment to rent just for themselves. The constant stress over the years took its toll on Kasia, who suffered a breakdown last spring and was hospitalised for several weeks. During her stay, she got an eviction notice; the apartment she was renting was going up for sale.

“Social services were contacted, and they helped me to get assessed for emergency accommodation and we’ve now been living in this city centre hotel hub for six months,” explains Kasia. “The situation is really hard,” she adds. “I regularly go to apartment viewings, and I see so many people who are struggling with the same situation as me. I know there’s a lot of competition. And obviously the landlord is going to choose to rent to a couple who are working over a single mum, because they have more capacity to afford the rent, in their eyes.”

“It’s a crisis,” says head of family services with Focus Ireland John O’Haire. “About 10 years ago, there were less than 800 families experiencing homelessness. It’s now 2,500 families. Over 4,000 children don’t have a home coming up to Christmas this year,” states O’Haire. “We just can’t find enough housing options to fill the need. It’s nothing to do with the family and nothing to do with their behaviour. Simply we can’t immediately find a property and more and more what we're doing now is preparing them for what the homeless system looks like and continuing to try and help out as quickly as we can.”

“It’s looking like I’ll be here for Christmas, and it makes me very sad,” says Kasia. “The space we’re living in is one room with a bathroom. It’s like a little cage. It does feel like a cell.”

“Parents constantly tell us that living in a hotel room is incredibly claustrophobic,” agrees O’Haire. “You sleep there. You eat there. You do your homework there. There’s no break. No separate bedrooms. No privacy. Day after day, for months or even years. It's like a pressure cooker. And imagine all that pressure building up and then throw into it knowing that people are judging, so imagine what they feel in terms of shame and stigma which they shouldn’t, but they do. When we know through studies the harm this is causing to children and families and to single people, why wouldn't you try and take people out of that?”

“I’m not working at the moment, so it’s even more stressful,” adds Kasia. “There are no visitors allowed in the hub, and I can’t leave my child alone, so I’m only available to work during school hours,” she explains. “I’ve started trials with lots of places but when they realise my situation and that I’m not as flexible for them timewise, they’re not interested. My focus is on Karolina right now. She’s changed schools three times already and it’s been a traumatic time for her overall.

“In school she has experienced some bullying — a kid was calling her poor and she didn’t like that. And I don’t blame her. She definitely has anger issues which I feel is directly related to the isolation here. She can’t play with friends after school and in the evenings. To keep her occupied, I allow her time on her electronics but too much will stress her out so it’s a balancing act. She’s on a shortlist now for therapy to help manage her emotions.

“I have days that I feel really overloaded by this place. But I’m trying to be positive because that’s all I can do. I have to believe that this situation is not forever, it will be fixed, somehow, somewhere, sometime. I’m trying not to hope that something might happen before Christmas. So, every day I say to myself, I need to be strong. But sometimes I have my bad days as well, you know, because I'm human.”

“I think everybody — like any family coming into us, like all our families and my own family — has challenges in their own and wider family and community,” says O’Haire, “but you tend to be able to find somebody you can lean on and you’re in the security and the peace of your own home. People like Kasia don't have that. They're trying to navigate homelessness, which is a really challenging thing to do, and then add in those psychological pressures.

“At Focus Ireland, we put supports in place, to try and minimise the hardship and that trauma that they will feel and experience,” says O’Haire. “We do everything we can to prepare them to move back into the community. And look, we want to stress too that it isn't inevitable that everyone is going to be in a long-term situation. There's always hope. I've seen people in the most difficult circumstances, and it's a stage, not a state. You will move on, but the risk for children is bigger the longer it goes on. Of course it is.”

O'Haire continues, "That's why our focus is on campaigning to get the Government to prioritise those people who are in long-term homelessness. But we can’t end homelessness without the public’s compassion and support. Every person or family secure in a new home is a step forward, while we work towards an end to the wider housing crisis. They are our children too and we have a duty as a society to provide a safe home for them.”

To donate or to find out more about Focus Ireland’s Christmas appeal, please visit https://www.focusireland.ie/ or contact us by phone on 018815900 or email help@focusireland.ie.

*Names have been changed