Homeless woman: This is no way for families to live
A woman, whose family was unable to get any emergency accommodation on Tuesday night, has said the situation has left her and her family heartbroken.
Cheryl Barnwell said the present system is no way for families to live and said the proposed family hubs would not be sufficient because "they are just hotels, with the hotel name taken off it".
Cheryl told Today with Sean O'Rourke that she felt everyone had a right to their own home and privacy.
She said that she has worked since she was fourteen and explained that her family became homeless 7 months ago, after her landlord decided to stop renting to Dublin City Council.
Until then, she said, she had worked full time and she and her partner had paid the equivalent of a mortgage in rent.
Cheryl said she had to give up her job because it is too difficult to do everything while also searching for accommodation on a daily basis.
On Tuesday night, she said rang around forty hotels and B&Bs between 9am and 6pm.
She then rang the Dublin City Council self accommodation line, who advised her to contact Focus Ireland, who in turn advised her to attend a Garda station.
Cheryl said that she later went to a Garda station where she was told that, unless they were arrested, they could not sleep in a cell.
She told Sean O'Rourke that the family stayed in their car until midnight, when they received a text from the head of inner city helping the homeless.
She, her partner and two sons then spent the night in his office.
She described how she spent her days ringing places for accommodation, while also trying to care for her two sons.
Anthony Flynn, the chief executive of Inner City Helping the Homeless, has said Tuesday night was one of the worse he has seen, in four years of homeless services.
Mr Flynn, who put Cheryl and her family up in his office on Tuesday night, said he rang over 55 hotels between midnight and 1.30am and not one was able to accommodate Cheryl and her family.
He told Sean O'Rourke that the family hubs, proposed by Minister Simon Coveney, is a re-categorization of hotel accommodation and described it as a 'whitewash.'
