When my Granny, a Cork publican, was trying to clear the bar at closing time, she’d roar at the lonely, half-cut farmers who were slow to drink up: “Have you no homes to go to?”
Of course, they did have homes, they just didn’t want to go home. They were bachelors, lots of them, and they didn’t want to face yet another evening on their own, freezing, both locked in and locked out at the same time.
The child in me never understood their reticence to leave but, of course, I can see now that they needed the company provided by the pub, the cards, the darts, the fire and the other bachelors, who like themselves, came in every night for friendship and human contact.
Loneliness can come in many guises. These men may have been lonely, but they did have a place to call home. Can you imagine not having a home?
Just imagine living on the streets, with no place to go all day or night? One of the overwhelming feelings must be loneliness. When we think of homelessness, we think of the cold, wet, hunger, violence, but rarely do we consider the emotional aspect. Recently, I gave a talk to help raise money for the Simon Community, where I was lucky enough to hear from homeless people about what it is actually like.
The recurring theme from these testimonies is the fact that the homeless are invisible to most of us, me included. I have stepped over countless people in sleeping bags. I have averted my gaze, fearing to catch their eye. I have answered my phone just to avoid any human contact and I have felt uneasy about fellas begging under ATM machines.
Maybe we do this because we feel that these people are not like us, their suffering is different. But everyone starts with dreams and hopes. The homeless must’ve imagined a different future. But as evidenced by the man who died this week only yards from the Dail and on one of our most expensive streets, we can all hit rock bottom.
The lack of a “roof over the head” could be solved without too much difficulty, as it is only the extreme manifestation of a profoundly dysfunctional property market, where the street is the ultimate, lamentable destination for those for whom the society isn’t working.
Before I listened to the stories of the homeless, I satisfied myself that a huge amount of the problem were self-inflicted by heroin and alcohol abuse. But having heard their stories, the drugs and the booze and anything else that numbs their daily experience are the consequences, not the causes of their plight. In many of the cases I heard, the cards are stacked against people from the start.
Many people who end up in sleeping bags started life in institutions or were in foster care from a very young age. It is quite likely that their parents were close to the bottom of society, too. Lots of people who leave prison or mental health institutions with nowhere to go on their release can end up homeless. Obviously, living on the streets is a vicious cycle of violence, poverty, cold, ill health, everyday boredom, loneliness, and drugs and more booze and more drugs.
It isn’t hard to see how the most resourceful of people will drown in such circumstances.
While many people (3,000 according to the last census) end up in the alleys of Dublin, it is clear that no one chooses this and there are common experiences in most homeless people’s lives.
They almost all started out poor. They are not often well-educated and many, from what I could see, were in abusive relationships either at home or in subsequent life. There is a significant amount of mental illness on the street, which is exacerbated by drugs and booze or maybe vice versa.
In recent years, the recession has had a huge impact. There are new homeless people, those who have had a stake in society, with a house, a job and status but who have fallen through the cracks and find the journey from security to the street shockingly rapid.
This morning, I walked past the Iveagh Buildings in Dublin, built by the Guinness family. When you look around Dublin you see many great initiatives undertaken by wealthy Victorians to alleviate the suffering of their fellow Dubliners.
We have lots of wealthy people in Dublin and as the economy improves the number of wealthy will increase. As the rich grow older, being rich doesn’t really become the driving force, the issue after a certain amount of money becomes legacy. What did he do with his cash? Was he just rich or was he also far-sighted?
These questions become important to the very wealthy as they appreciate that being a man of vision gives you far more status than being merely a man of money.
Against this background, maybe we could re-create the old Victorian notion of City Fathers – influential people who could do something about the city’s problems off their own bat, rather than waiting for the State?
If the Victorians could address social and economic problems facing our city, like accommodation, clean water and basic education through private philanthropy, why not our generation?
Think about how great many buildings in the US are financed by donation from wealthy New Yorkers such as wings of hospitals and libraries? In my neck of the woods in Dun Laoghaire the local library, the Carnegie Library, was built by the Scottish/American industrialist Andrew Carnegie. Why not do something like this again? Why couldn’t a wealthy man build a legacy by housing the very poorest in the city?
It is hard to imagine a better epithet for a wealthy person than alleviating the plight of his fellow citizens. This is the type of stuff that history is made of.
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“Against this background, maybe we could re-create the old Victorian notion of City Fathers – influential people who could do something about the city’s problems off their own bat, rather than waiting for the State?” Hi David, Why don’t you ring Dennis O’Brien and tell him all he has to do is to reduce his expected ROC from his investment in Topaz from a rapacious 16% to 8% and allow the lower end workers take home more. Then ring Michael O’Leary and tell him the next time Ryanair makes 500m in one year ask him to divide up 50m of… Read more »
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if only we had a church body who had lots of land and fine cut stone empty buildings and acres of land in the city and who owed the populous loads of redress money and who had a charitable ethos whose teaching said something like ‘And he lifted up his eyes on his disciples, and said: “Blessed are you who are poor, for yours is the kingdom of God.’……………just not in this life
Heard this on the radio on Sunday night while driving back up to Dublin:
http://www.npr.org/2013/10/04/191618910/can-you-code-a-better-government
I can’t see a clear connection, but I wonder could you get an… “adopt a homeless person” thing going (not that you’d actually “adopt” them, or that they are comparable to a fire-hydrant) but could you feed them a sandwich? give them a dry place to talk with someone for an hour? give them a chance to learn something?… I don’t know?
Wealthy Irish people have never been known for their generosity. Most charity work is done by the average Joe. Chuck Feeney has given more than the Irish elite ever will.
There’s a simple reason why our wealthy aren’t as generous with their money in the way philantopists like Feeney and millions of his countrymen are. It’s called welfare. When the welfare state was created, the onus was taken off people to help their fellow man, and taken up by the state. In fact the creation of the welfare/nanny state has ensured that not only do people not need to help others, they grow up with the opinion that they don’t need to because “the government will look after them”. In fact for most of us, taking a defined portion of… Read more »
It’s sickening to see so many homeless people while we still have quite a high housing vacancy rate – both in the cities and as a nation as a whole. The government and construction industry are carrying on as if these empty homes exist. Dublin City had a 10% vacancy rate in the last Census and it would still be quite high.
Tomahawk you got it spot on. The archbishops are pontificating again today about the homeless crisis. A few solutions? 1. How about bringing some portacabins into the grounds of their comfortable palaces and major landholdings and house homeless people there as a temporary measure? 2. How about stop using vast church resources to defend and harbour the filthy animals in clerical collars who abused defenceless children and divert those resources to the homeless instead? 3. How about asking some of the tax exiles to pay their fair share of taxes in the Country that nurtured their businesses and generated their… Read more »
The better off Irish farmer and merchant classes watched their fellow Irish countrymen starve to death or flee the country in obscene numbers, estimated at over 2 million out of a population of some 8 million, between 1845 and 1850. It was not Trevellyan who “took” the Irish corn by force it was the Irish merchant classes who bought it from small tenant farmers desperate to pay their rents to avoid eviction. It was a merchant class, whose descendants are now the “better off” merchant and professional classes of Ireland, who shipped it out of a dying country at enormously… Read more »
how many houses does it take to palace an archbishop?
https://www.google.ie/maps/@53.3650206,-6.2543301,18z?hl=en
Nice article David but a bit soft on the real solution. Destitution is the lot for all who don’t conform to the will of capital. We are no longer living in a society or anything that resembles one. As ex Fedral Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan, famously bragged, keeping workers “One paycheck away from homelessness,” seems to be the goal of the current breed of greedmongers. Real and meaningful change from the top to the bottom is required rather than handouts from the super wealthy after their conscience is pricked. I do admit that Quaker capitalism would be preferable to what… Read more »
Instead of ‘wealthy people of vision’ how about a ‘society of vision’? The sentence I take from David’s article is “find the journey from security to the street shockingly rapid”. On the mark, Ireland is becoming a ‘sink or swim’ society, or rather a ‘sink or scam’ society, but this is what the Irish people want, we are all grown adults living in a tiny country with a tiny population where everybody is either related to each other or knows of each other. The government did not cause this man’s death, we did, there is no enemy to point the… Read more »
We cannot even get the rich to pay PAYE in this country.
They engage ins charity social functions a PR stunt to cover up the persistent effort they put into tax reduction.
Hi David On the matter of American philanthropy; think about the criminalisation of homelessness in many American cities today; and the fact that it is also a crime to feed the homeless in many American cities today. Think about a homeless military veteran arrested and imprisoned in a private for-profit factory prison, for sitting on a park bench in a veteran’s memorial park! Think of a couple of million homeless military veterans scattered across America…comitting suicide at an average rate of one per hour. I think it would indeed be a good thing if the wealthy Irish were to do… Read more »
Apparently, it has come to light that Mr Corrie sold 2 houses which were given to him. So, he was not homeless as we understand it. Why does this man deserve any sympathy? Why all the hand wringing? You cannot help people who cannot help themselves.
Political correctness gone mad, that is what has allowed your streets to be filled with degenerates. In my day they were called bums, winos, tramps, beggars and thieves. The understanding with the police was, you go to the mission and hear a little sermon and get your soup and bread. No public disorder, no crapping on the sidewalk, no shooting up or public drunkenness in plain view of normal citizens, and no aggressive behaviour of any type. You were on the lowest rung of the ladder, your were on “skid row” and your were treated that way. Guess what, it… Read more »
Les Miserables – April 2015 – Book Now
http://limetreetheatre.ticketsolve.com/shows/873525783/events?TSLVq=9557c29f-c465-4dc6-bfde-db22ae158abb&TSLVp=9c896749-979b-4725-b9de-c497b4904b2f&TSLVts=1417772863&TSLVc=ticketsolve&TSLVe=limetreetheatre&TSLVrt=Safetynet&TSLVh=e6a35dc0321269a8a24a42a3568be87f
I am really surprised at the attitude David is taking to this – it seems to be early Victorian – keep our taxes low for us wealthy and we will take care of the poor with our charity – Noblisse Oblige. ” There is a significant amount of mental illness on the street, which is exacerbated by drugs and booze or maybe vice versa.” A significant amount of mental illness follows up from the ravages of addiction..something advocates of legalised cannabis might bear in mind. And a further reality is that many on the streets will have been housed and… Read more »
Surprised to see an ill-informed and populist article from you David. The reality is that the most generous and charitable nations on earth are those that have people that are both wealthy, religious and with lower taxes. It is well established that the US donates the most. But to they have an income tax rate above 50%? no. do they have a budget at the end of a recession that increases tax on people above €70,000. so people should not be surprised if higher earners do not do more. Sweden, France for example donate less. But they also probably have… Read more »
to answer this properly we should distinguish between the housing crisis and the homeless, or at least the long term homeless. We should also actually spell out what the problem is and ints. The housing crisis is very real and needs more housing supply. The homeless crisis doesn’t need more housing but more resources for people who couldn’t hold down a house if you gave it to them. The guy who died in Dublin had relatives who cared for him and a house in Carlow, but he couldn’t live with them, nor could they be expected to have him because… Read more »
At which point in the near future are people going to wake up to the fact that the REITs are Enda’s Cromwell?
We now have people in Ireland who are paid bonuses based on the amount they can increase peoples rents each year.
People’s rents are going up more in a month than the fashionably unfashionable water charge will hit them in a year, without so much as a wiff of front page reporting.