‘Some of the places that you see in the ads have bunk beds in shared rooms’

Laura Chabal graduated from the Sorbonne in 2015 and moved to Ireland soon after. For the first few months she was interning and not earning a salary, so she stayed with relatives to keep her costs down. Then she came to an arrangement with a family whereby she would live in a room in their garden, and provide babysitting in exchange for a reduction in rent. “I moved in in December, and it was really cold and miserable,” she recalls. “The room had a bathroom and a fridge, but no heating and nowhere to cook. I never got out of bed, it was the only place to stay warm! I minded the children three days a week and that brought the rent down from €480 to €180 per month. I was allowed to cook in the house but I didn’t feel comfortable doing that as I didn’t know them well and it felt as if I was intruding.”

After a few months, Laura moved on to Ranelagh. “I had a teeny tiny house in someone’s garden with its own separate entrance. There was a sitting room, bedroom and bathroom, but again no kitchen. The people were friends of friends so I felt more comfortable using their kitchen. I paid €600 a month but it was a short-term thing,” she says,

Next was a house-share in Donnybrook. “The house was beautiful and my single room cost me €450 per month, but the living situation was unbearable and I only stayed for two months. The owner was away most of the time and there were two other ‘ladies’ who had rooms in the house. One of them was much older than me and quite bossy, telling me to clean up the kitchen before I had even sat down to eat my dinner. Honestly, I felt I was being bullied.”

Things finally came good for Laura when she moved into a room in a shared house in Rialto at the start of the summer. “I found it through friends of friends and immediately I walked into the house it felt like home,” she says. “I could unpack my suitcase and relax for the first time. My house mates are both a little older than me, in their 30s, but we each have our own space and get on well.

“I’m paying €610 per month plus bills. I feel lucky because it’s a clean, nice house — some of the places that you see in the ads have bunk beds in shared rooms! In Paris where I lived before, rent is expensive but there are lots of studios so you don’t have so much sharing. And in Paris, they tell you immediately if you have got the place, whereas here no one ever seems to call you back when they say that they will.”