Local radio station, Ocean FM this week highlighted an absolutely appalling story which should have the authorities hanging their heads in shame. Host of the North West Today programme, Niall Delaney, spoke to Chris who is a carer for his mother who has a disability. Both were recently evicted from the home they were renting in Donegal.
People with disabilities, especially those who are older, obviously have additional housing needs: ordinary things that many of us take for granted, like running up the stairs or jumping into the shower can be hugely difficult, if not impossible, unless a home is configured to take those special requirements into account.
This should be apparent to everybody, and to the local housing authority in particular- just as it should be obvious that said authority is utterly failing in its duties if an elderly woman with a disability is made homeless and forced to sleep in a car. But that’s what happened to Chris and his mother.
They had lived in Ballybofey for 10 years before their rented home was sold, he told Ocean FM – and then moved to Mallin Head, but had also received an eviction notice when that house was being sold. What happened next has now become disturbingly commonplace: an increasingly frantic search for alternative accommodation in an already crowded, ever-tightening rental market – compounded by the fact that the needs of a person with disability had to be met.
A friend of mine who once lost the family home told me that the growing fear and panic of falling into homelessness as eviction date approaches is utterly terrifying and all-consuming, and that most corrosive of all is the overwhelming feeling of helplessness and despair as one hope after another is dashed: as yet another lead turns to nothing and time inexorably speeds towards the day when you will be out on the street with nowhere to go.
Chris is a full-time carer for his mother, and he said that despite their efforts they had reached their eviction date without finding accommodation and been told by the Council that no emergency accommodation was available. He also said that some landlords were unwilling to accept tenants in receipt of HAP payments – mostly, it seemed, because of tax and registration purposes.
He and his mother had been on the housing list for eight years, he said, and he had reached out to voluntary organisations like Focus Ireland and Vincent de Paul as well as TDs and Councillors and the media, and had even spent time posted on Facebook pages in the search for any possible accommodation.
The man sounded completely exhausted – and said that the Council would not consider them for emergency accommodation because Chris and his mother had previously said that a house that had been offered was not suitable for a person with disabilities. What kind of bureaucratic nonsense is that? Why should a person with disability and her carer be denied emergency housing because they pointed out that what was offered to them as housing was unsuitable – by which they mean inaccessible for a person with disability to use. It’s not as if they didn’t like the colour of the wallpaper or the location – Chris said they would go anywhere for a home – it’s that it is impossible to live in a house with a hall too narrow for a wheelchair, for example, if that’s a requirement, or that doesn’t have a downstairs bathroom if you can’t get up the stairs.
Again, it seems utterly absurd that this would need to be pointed out to the housing authorities. The fundamental rights of people with disabilities are shamefully neglected by the state: by a government that likes to virtue signal endlessly about diversity while refusing to ratify an important UN protocol that allows people with disabilities to hold the authorities accountable for their failures.
There’s another aspect here: it feels sometimes like the State has nothing but contempt for people with disabilities – they’d rather they weren’t born, and they see them as a burden, when in fact those who have special needs are very often the people who teach us what’s important in life, and who bring riches unachievable by endless scrabbling in a greasy till, however unrecognised their contribution may be in a world obsessed with unattainable perfection and success.
“My sense of pride has vanished,” Chris told Ocean FM, adding that he had tried to get respite care but that he had told been that none was available and that services were too busy – “full to the brim” – especially in the summer. The fact that families an ongoing scandal
They would likely spend another night in the car that evening, he said. The situation is absolutely shocking, as one caller phoned in to say, with another adding that he had seen Chris posting in Facebook groups trying to find a home.
Listeners rang in to praise Chris for looking after his mother and to castigate the council for failing such a vulnerable family. But the failure of the authorities is actually more egregious than their inability to provide basic services. The state has a duty of care towards an elderly woman with a disability, including a duty to assist in finding housing. In this case, Chris is saving the state a fortune because he is willing to care for his mother. Like countless others he is providing what family has always provided: love and care and wrap-around support. But instead of the authorities recognising that and playing their part in ensuring fundamental services they are neglectful to the point where Chris and his mother are forced to sleep in their car.
It is “heartbreaking”, Niall Delaney said, and he is right. But how many times have we been heartbroken and shocked by these stories? How many times do we feel that the dreadful plight of homeless people in Ireland must surely have hit rock bottom?
When a homeless man died near the Dáil, or when pregnant woman are living in tents in Dublin, or when an 81-year old woman was found freezing and distressed at the GPO, we might have thought homelessness in this country couldn’t get any worse. But the terrible, shocking stories just keep coming, and maybe we’re becoming immune to them now.
The social contract isn’t just broken, its torn up and ripped to shreds, it has become increasingly meaningless. It’s as if a significant section of the population doesn’t actually believe the government will fulfill its obligation to its most vulnerable any more, or maybe have just given up trying to hold them to account. Perhaps that explains relatively low voter turnout, despite the obvious public anger on key issues. But all staying at home ensures is that the ruling parties don’t seem to suffer any consequences of their epic failures in housing, healthcare, cost of living, immigration and more.
We say situations like that faced by Chris are “unacceptable”, yet we keep accepting them. We’re shocked and devastated so often by these horrendous stories that maybe we think the situation is hopeless, but its not. The government’s failure to tackle housing; the hostility to the construction of new homes – and to small landlords while greedy investment funds continue to distort the market by buying to let; and the blind insistence that the surge in immigration has nothing to do with the spiralling housing problem are all issues that should not be swept under the carpet. We can’t simply go on hearing stories about elderly disabled women being forced to sleep in cars without actually doing something to enable change.