There are at least 150 ‘hidden homeless’ people living in tents in Ireland’s capital city, the Irish Mirror can reveal.
It is understood that the number of desperate people taking shelter in tents in the greater Dublin area has surged ten-fold.
At least half of them are couples who do not have access to proper sanitation, medical supplies or basic necessities.
Denise Hudson, who lives in a tent with her terminally-ill partner, spoke of her pain yesterday, while another homeless woman said: “I feel like we don’t exist.”
Tony Walsh, the founder of the Feed Our Homeless charity, said: “These guys are the forgotten homeless, they’re buried in the back of trees, out of public view where nobody knows where they are and they are missing out on medical treatment.
“These people aren’t in the official count and they’re the hidden homeless.”
Fears are growing that dozens of these people will die over the coming months.
There has been an explosion of rough sleepers in Dublin, with about 150 men and women now sleeping in 100 tents in squalid scenes which should shame the country.
Homeless charity leaders insisted yesterday many couples are choosing to sleep in tents as they are afraid of being separated in drug and violence-ridden hostels.
Denise Hudson, who lives in a tent with her terminally-ill partner, spoke of her pain, while 41-year-old Karen said: “I feel like we don’t exist.”
Tony Walsh, whose outreach team started a new service visiting and offering supports to rough sleepers three weeks ago, said: “If any of these guys died in the Phoenix Park tonight nobody would know about it because nobody knows they’re there bar us.
“We’re logging them, we’re saying where they are.
“We’re already concerned about one of our service users, a guy I’m engaging with, who we haven’t seen in two nights. There’s a red flag over him.”
Mr Walsh said when the charity started in 2017 they were giving out four to five tents a night but now it’s seven or eight.
He added: “There are many people sleeping in tents in the Phoenix Park who we engage with who don’t even have sleeping bags.
“If that was in the winter time how would they be? The big fear is that with the winter approaching there will be dozens of deaths.
“We’re calling on the Government to urgently intervene now and put interventions in place before the winter comes.”
The last official count of rough sleepers in Dublin city was 128 but charity leaders believe the true figure is about 230 people – with many sleeping in parks.
The Irish Mirror counted 47 tents in the Phoenix Park yesterday and up to a dozen within 200m of the Wellington monument.
Mr Walsh added: “I am calling on the Dublin Region Homeless Executive and Dublin City Council to make State-funded emergency hostels safer at night to encourage homeless people to take up the beds and get access to the support and the wrap-around services in the community to help them to move out of homelessness.
“There are room checks in the hostels every hour and [I would] break them down to where the drug use is and have them every 15 minutes to make them safer.
“The also need to abolish the one-night-only beds.
“They split couples up and they could easily turn them into six-month beds for couples where they have access to key workers and access to outside services like housing, education, addiction [treatment] with the supports from the services that they’re in. About half of the service users we engage with are couples and most of our service users in the Phoenix Park are couples.
“I’m calling on the Government to provide basic medical treatment for a lot of these homeless people as nobody other than our outreach team engages with these men and women.”
Anthony Flynn, founder of Inner City Helping Homeless, said: “You can see that right across the city, if you go up and down the canals at the moment you will pass by a number of tents that are very prominent.
“And the Luas line up in the Inchicore area seems to be a very predominant place as well for people to be sleeping rough. In terms of what we would see on an increase, tents have 10-folded if not 15-folded over the last two years.”
Mr Flynn said the “biggest issue” is they never have enough beds in the system to accommodate the amount of people that are actually homeless.
He added: “So we’re always short of, on-average 150 to 180 beds per night.”
- People without a permanent roof over their heads can seek support by calling ICHH on 018881804 or Feed Our Homeless on 014442966.
Homeless in Ireland - the grim reality - case study 1
Denise Hudson’s partner John (not his real name) only has two months to live and is seriously ill with HIV.
She claimed she had told the Dublin Region Homeless Executive staff how sick her partner was but they still could not offer them a bed or a room together.
The 40-year-old, from Clondalkin, Dublin, said: “It was freezing last night and I had no sleeping bag.
“It’s my birthday today and I’m actually 40.
“I’m five years with my partner. He has HIV and he hasn’t been taking his medication in a year-and-a-half and they can’t do anything else for him. “No [there’s nobody engaging with us].
“There’s no couples beds [in the emergency hostels].
“I don’t want to be split up, I want to be with him. He only has weeks to live.”
Case study 2
Karen (not her real name), 31, from Blanchardstown, has been sleeping rough for more than three months with her partner of seven years.
The couple occupy one tent, while another couple sleep in a nearby one and four single homeless men live in the remaining three.
Karen said all of the rough sleepers are moving out of the city because they are being spat on or kicked in doorways.
She added: “I feel like we don’t exist. We’re just pushed to the side.”
Karen added she started taking methadone in prison and was clean when she got out last November, while her partner is also on the substitute for heroin.
She added: “I was told there’d be support there for me but you get no supports in the one-night-only [stays] in hostels.
Case study 3
Mark (not his real name), 41, from Drogheda, Co Louth, was never homeless before he left the family home and has been sleeping in a tent in the Phoenix Park for the past three months.
He said there was "trouble at home and the guards were called" and he agreed to leave.
Mark is afraid to go to the emergency hostels because of the stories he has heard about violence and drugs.
He said: “Nobody’s safe up here [in tents] either.
“Where I am it could be safe, but it’s near enough the road so somebody could come in and set the tent on fire.
“Oh yes [I am afraid].
“It’s about 3 o’clock when I get to sleep.
“If the hostel beds were safer I’d be in there straight away.”
