Leafy-lane objections are a tad hypocritical
THE tale of a Dublin hotel’s slide into squalor and despair once it began to accommodate the homeless was recently aired at the Workplace Relations Commission. The testimony came from the hotel’s longtime receptionist, who was used to dealing with a regular clientele of concert-goers and weekenders.
When the homeless took up residence, she gained a ringside seat to harrowing scenes of suicide attempts, drug abuse, fighting and child neglect.
Eventually, she quit her job of 13 years. The commission awarded the receptionist a modest compensation, noting how neither Dublin County Council, who were responsible for the homeless families, nor the hotel owners, had offered her any training in dealing with the needs of the homeless or support for working in such a stressful environment.
The hotel’s dramatic transformation, from purveyor of middle-of-the road hospitality to crisis accommodation, might seem to justify the aghast reaction of the residents of leafy St Lawrence’s Road in Clontarf at the handsome B&B in their midst now being used to accommodate 13 homeless families.
BUT it is also a cautionary tale of what can occur when strangers are thrown together and left to their own devices without proper security and supervision or decent upkeep of their common areas. Had these things been tended to at the hotel, the receptionist might still be there.
If things are handled properly in Clontarf, there’s every likelihood that harmony will be restored in the neighbourhood.
The schadenfreude that greeted the news that one of the city’s smartest streets is to become a homeless address is the same that greets reports of local resistance to the proposed halting site on, for example, the Mount Anville Road in a monied south Dublin suburb. We love it when those who live in a bubble of wealth and privilege are forced to deal with the same gritty problems that most of us encounter regularly on our way to work.
Of course, not every resident of St Lawrence’s Road is of the gilded elite, no more than every homeless person is a junkie.
There are families on St Lawrence’s who were just fortunate to grab a bargain during the bust and as many again who are up to their necks in negative equity.
Dublin city councillor Nial Ring lives on the road but the bank has a possession order for his house because of €500,000 arrears.
Our 2,708 homeless children are the most painful legacy of the crash but those saddled with mortgages they can never repay are also in line for tea and sympathy. It’s natural they should watch out for anything that might cause the value of their property to collapse.
AT THE same time, the residents’ kneejerk reaction to the sale – their opposition on the grounds that the houses are not suitable while at the same time voicing compassion for the homeless – is pathetic and hypocritical. If period homes just yards from the seafront are good enough for the professional classes, they are certainly good enough for the homeless.
We can’t send all the homeless to live on the city limits or to add to the problems of already deprived areas. Ghettoisation is a sure path to more antisocial behaviour and deeper malaise.
The scale of homelessness is so immense that all areas, rich and poor, must play their part.
But residents and homeless people must also be supported in the process – not hung out to dry like the poor hotel receptionist.