Family moved in with parents for 18 months to find 5% home deposit
A COUPLE who moved in with parents and shared a bed with their young daughter while they saved for a house, say more needs to be done to put home ownership within reach of struggling workers.
Kimberley and Mark O’Reilly and daughter Evelyn feature in new RTÉ documentary Home: My Year In The Housing Crisis, which follows people hit by rising prices and rents over the course of a year.
Mark, a plumber, and Kimberley, a project manager for a tech firm, were living in a two-bed rented apartment in Baldoyle, north Dublin, when they realised they were fast outgrowing it, and, sick also of the lack of security for tenants, they moved in with Mark’s parents in Donaghmede in December 2018. Little did they realise that a year and a half later they would still be there, working overtime and cutting back on spending, to save for a deposit, all the while sharing a bed with their six-year-old.
‘So ensued a year and a half of stress and sacrifice and good, happy times as well,’
Kimberley said. ‘The family had Christmas together along with birthdays and Sunday dinners and things like that, but it was very difficult as well.’
They were working towards buying a house while availing of the Government’s Help to Buy scheme, which allows people to buy new-builds with 5% of the purchase price as a deposit, while they can claim back another 5% in tax. But still they found it stressful.
Other families featured in the documentary include downsizers 89-year-old Catherine Keating and her daughter and carer Deirdre, who are leaving behind their council house in Blackrock, Cork for a purpose-built council apartment.
Meanwhile, musicians Rufus Coates and Jess Smith from Meath escape spiralling rents by fleeing to Berlin, but the move leaves them missing family.
James, living in a tent in the Phoenix Park and begging in Dublin city centre, sees his already upside-down world upended again by lockdown.
And single mother Danielle and her children Mark, 19, and Isabelle, 11, are evicted from their Crumlin home after it is bought by a vulture fund.