‘We are failing State’s homeless children like brave Amanda’
Coveney’s shame at detailed ordeal
TÁNAISTE Simon Coveney has said he ‘accepts’ that homeless families living in hotels are being failed – after a fifth-year student detailed her harrowing daily existence in emergency accommodation.
Secondary student, Amanda (not her real name) gave a powerful interview on RTÉ’s Morning Ireland yesterday in which she described how she felt ‘ashamed’ at the way her family was forced to live – and how she is struggling to keep focused on her Leaving Cert.
She has been living in temporary accommodation for more than a year with her mother Teresa (also not her real name) after her mother’s marriage broke down and she could no longer afford mortgage repayments.
The family’s story was highlighted on RTÉ last year, and the broadcaster returned to the family this week, one year on.
Amanda said she struggled with the ‘stench’ of other families cooking in hotel rooms, as well as mould in between walls and curtains, and that her mental health was deeply affected by her living conditions. The interview prompted a strong reaction on social media as the young woman wept as she discussed her living conditions.
Amanda hit out at the Taoiseach Leo Varadkar and Housing Minister Eoghan Murphy saying they are ‘not doing their job’. She said: ‘It’s their job to care and if they don’t they shouldn’t have the job – give the job to someone that actually cares.’
However, speaking to RTÉ afterwards, Tánaiste Simon Coveney said housing was the Government’s number one priority and admitted it was ‘unacceptable’ for anyone to be living like Amanda.
He added that he accepted the ‘State’ is currently failing Amanda, and went on to say: ‘I was the minister that made it very clear that it is totally unacceptable for families to be growing up in hotel rooms and that we are going to end that. Between July and August this year 80 families have been taken out of hotel rooms and are now in their homes – there were 174 children in those families.
‘It’s heartbreaking to listen to Amanda talk about the stresses and strains that clearly come with living out of a hotel room with her family and trying to go to school every day. That is not acceptable in Ireland today, and we’re going to change it. That’s why we spent around €60million last year building for family hubs,’ which he said were ‘far more suitable temporary accommodation’. He added: ‘What I want to say to her is that housing is the number one priority for Government now and we will do whatever is necessary in terms of funding and policy change, to get the social housing programme accelerated in a way that can get Amanda out of that totally unsuitable accommodation as soon as is possible.’
Amanda said she is so weary with her situation that she often feels voiceless. ‘You want to voice what’s actually going on, the truth with everything, but you’re sometimes afraid and just your voice is gone,’ she said. ‘I feel like I’ve been stolen of most of my life, these are the years that I’m supposed to be focusing on getting a decent education, making friends, going out and living my life. But I can’t even do normal things like open a bank account, because I don’t have an address. I don’t have anything that helps me in life. It’s really annoying when I can’t tell friends the truth about my life. It’s too
Leo and Murphy ‘not doing their job’ ‘It’s a struggle every day’
embarrassing, you never know with people. Some could say, “oh yeah, it’s fine”, but others can say, “how are you homeless, like is your mam scheming the country?”.’
Amanda had to repeat fifth year as an indirect result of her situation, but is worried her situation may prevent her from going to college. She said: ‘It’s already October… If I have to do my Leaving Cert in here, there’s no chance of me going to college... It’s a struggle every day, getting up and even just taking the blankets off yourself in the morning, it’s horrible.’
Homelessness campaigner Fr. Peter McVerry said Amanda’s account had been ‘powerful’.
He said: ‘There’s lots of reports highlighting the effect of being homeless on young people but she expressed everything in those reports in a very passionate and telling way.’
MANY Morning Ireland listeners will have woken up yesterday and despaired at the story told by Amanda, a teenage girl who has been living with her mother in emergency accommodation, a hotel room, for two years now.
The listeners’ despair is fleeting, while Amanda’s is relentless, a daily battle to learn, to study, to maintain friendships, and to preserve her increasingly fragile mental health.
Through tears, she told how she dreaded pushing off the bed covers every morning in a room that is riddled with damp. She described the casual cruelty of others, who accused her of living in luxury while she waited for a ‘free’ house. She lamented the passing of the years in which she is supposed to be focusing on getting a decent education, making friends, going out and living life. The reality is that she can’t even open a bank account, because she doesn’t have an address.
Already, she has had to repeat fifth year indirectly because of the difficulty she faced trying to study, and says she will never get to college if she fails the Leaving Cert, though study is still virtually impossible in a room on a landing shared with other families, many of whom have small children who play and even eat in the corridor.
It was a compelling and heartbreaking insight into the lives of hundreds of children of all ages who have become the collateral damage of the housing crisis, abandoned and forgotten.
This is a very real issue that is affecting real people who are doing their best to survive. It is impossible to decide upon complex issues such as homelessness by looking at just one case, and there’s no doubting the more optimistic statistics on progress that Housing Minister Eoghan Murphy delivered yesterday, but given that this girl has been living in hotel accommodation for the last two years, it is also difficult to remain confident that the housing crisis is being managed adequately.
Amanda summed it up in one devastating sentence. ‘You want to voice what’s actually going on, the truth with everything,’ she said, ‘but you are sometimes afraid, and your voice is gone.’
Think about that for a moment. Your voice is gone.
If that is how Amanda feels, it is incumbent on the rest of us to use our voices on her behalf, and demand once again that in Tuesday’s Budget, housing provision will receive more funding, and local authorities be granted more power to build, to ensure she gets the safe haven she needs to study and thrive.