Posted by Ask any Irish rough sleeper why they won’t go to the hostel and they’ll tell you about their fear of being physically attacked (usually sexually), robbed of their belongings and exposed to everything from random needles in the bedding to airborne diseases such as Covid. Most of the Irish rough sleepers have left their family home because of abuse or they were forced to move out after the death of their parents (I met a few who were carers and had the legal right of residence but their siblings, nieces and nephews harassed them until they just gave up and left). Others are made homeless due to a marriage breakdown (the woman usually gets the house, the man has to find a rental flat and is vulnerable to eviction). Saddest of all are the elderly homeless, who have four choices:
1. Live with abusive family.
2. Serve a life sentence in an inhumane prison where you have no parole, the food is bland mush, you have no Netflix, no privacy and are spoken down to by people whose grasp of English is rudimentary. This is the experience of many old people in nursing homes, aka prisons for the innocent.
3. Go into a hellhole which is only marginally better than a nursing home: a homeless hostel.
4. Sleep on the street.
There used to be option 5: Mountjoy. But that’s the same as Option 3 now, because the prisons are so overcrowded that vulnerable people have to share cells.
Who Watches the Watchers? 