Homeless University Lecturer

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Brendan Burgess said:
Presumably he is not 56 either with a 20 year old son?
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My point - subtle I grant you - is that thinking outside the box can sometimes pay dividends.

Everyone in Ireland knows that there's been a serious and growing housing shortagefor a number of years, which leads me to wonder why someone being homeless is regarded as newsworthy.
 
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Having a gig teaching one course in university does not make you a permanent full time university ancedemic unfortunately. Many regarded people are asked to teach a topic in their field in university. It gives the students variety and brings a non academic perspective to the course content. The difference is they normally have a full time job at the same time.

So the lady is question is underemployed and has been for the past four years since she stopped being a screenwriter. She may also have had monetary support from the father of her child which may have stopped when her son turned 18. And she was renting a house for much less than €1900 per month for 20 years so she was managing on her low income, supported by HAP and other social welfare help.

In hindsight she is probably regretting not looking for training in a new field or employment opportunities in the 24 months since her landlord gave notice to sell, probably when the son turned 18! She might have had a greater earning power now if she had done that. In the current era of full employment she should look hard for work first. At 58 she need to be seriously considering where to live when she has no income from earnings. I don’t envy her current options but I think considering importing modular houses from Latvia might not be top of my list.

I had a family member who rented for years end up in a mobile home at the back of a house for several years. A couple of bleak winters certainly focuses the mind and they are now living in a house again that they own. A mixture of good fortune and widening the criteria for a house that would suit helped in the end, but every month house prices went higher and I was afraid they would miss the window of opportunity due to wanting a particular house or location.

For the lady in the article her choices are tight but increasing her earnings would definitely be a step in the right direction.
 
It's hard not to have sympathy for anyone in this situation. It's not a unique case and I wonder why it has to be a piece about an academic type rather than an ordinary worker, be they in services, retail, industry etc. As said by another poster, paper will not refuse ink.

I had a similar experience with a HAP tenant, The tenant refused to leave saying they could not find anywhere. However, they declined assistance from two letting agents to source an alternative rental property. They had a very low rent, a good property and clearly wanted to stay put for as long as possible. I declined to offer the property to the council under tenant in situ as you do not get market rate.

Out of the blue, the tenant offered to buy the property and made an offer way below market rate due to its condition (which they are responsible for causing). They say they also looked at other properties in the area to buy. It went to an RTB hearing and they were ordered to leave.

Now, although they have the means to buy a house, they have a brand new council/housing association property.

Some may say their current housing is not my concern. In a normal vacate it would not be..However, knowing what I do, I question how people with the means to buy a home can end up getting one supplied virtually free of charge /or at a substantially subsided rent. That is as much a problem as the shortage of social housing.

The system needs a radical overhaul to ensure those with the most urgent/genuine need of housing supports are able to benefit from the limited supply.
 
ClubMan said:
Maybe they were borrowing from friends/family to stretch to buying?
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Maybe you should not always question what people post. You also are not fully aware of all the circumstances or facts to suggest they may be getting assistance. They could have bought but chose instead a free house with no responsibility to maintain it because it's a far better outcome for them. The risk of homelessness here is virtually zero.
 
Luternau said:
Maybe you should not always question what people post.
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It's a discussion forum. You're free not to read what others post it it triggers you.
Luternau said:
You also are not fully aware of all the circumstances or facts to suggest they may be getting assistance.
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Er, neither are you. You don't know where they may have been getting the funds to make an offer on the property.
 
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You are not triggering me...please don't resort to gaslighting!
I have every much a right to reply to a assumpitive post as you.

Source of funds ...mortgage approval, as shown to my agent. They were just as stunned as I was that they can get a loan in the amount approved. Is that enough or do you have more to speculate?
 
Back in 2009 The same Irish Times carried an article about single parents needed to earn more 41K to break even with Welfare entitlements just wondering did some single parents park the progressing of there career,
There is also another factor lots of maintenance agreements end when child reaches age18 or 23, allowing mother to stay in family home until youngest reached 18 or 23, lots signed on to the housing list in good time expecting to be close to the top of the list or get hap when the time came to move from family home,

Seeing she will soon be a single adult requiring housing for 1 rather than a family what kind of housing is she looking for or expecting to get on her
income of 23k and working living in Galway in 2025



she could get the same as someone on 41K a year and not work in 2009

Should the Irish Times story be about A 58 years old and her career on the rocks and how can she effectively revive her career to make a good salary with her existing vast knowledge and experience to buy or rent a home for herself, in a high wages Country with her skilset,

She was also pondering inporting a home and putting it on her mothers land in Tuam co Galway costing 200000K seen a for a house to accommodate a soon to be single adult earning 23K per year
 
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ClubMan said:
aybe they were borrowing from friends/family to stretch to buying?
You simply don't know enough about their ciircumstances to draw any conclusions from one sing
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why do people buy the Irish Times when they can clearly see the low level of commitment to investigative journalism in this article
The amount of Questions not asked that should be asked is the real reason things are getting a little hot under the coller around these parts,
 
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Luternau said:
The system needs a radical overhaul to ensure those with the most urgent/genuine need of housing supports are able to benefit from the limited supply.
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When a great many people, including me, saw their net wealth increase by hundreds of thousands of euro due to the national and international response to the financial crisis and then the response to Covid, interventions which foisted staggering amounts debt on future generations, I am a bit reticent to get up on my high horse about social housing.

The vast amount of unearned money that most older people were given (replaced savings, reinflated house prices and pension funds) is theirs to pass on to their children. Social housing is not inter generational wealth.
If the women in this article had owned a house pre crash or had rich middle class parents who were now dead, then she’d be quite comfortable because the bailouts would have given her hundreds of thousands of euros of wealth (or she would have inherited her parents unearned wealth almost tax free).

Instead she’s now looking to get her rent subsidised.

I agree that we need to reform the system but if we are reforming one end then we have to reform the other end as well.
 
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Not sure why you're quoting part of my earlier post which has nothing to do with the Irish Times article.
 
Purple said:
Because the alternatives are as bad or worse
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I know well where you are coming from,
The Article as written is causing lots of disagreements on here, and is doing nothing to have a proper debate around homelessness,
If the Article was written with a high level of of Investigative Journalism at its core we would be having a different conversation,

Out of interest can you see how the article is of poor quality,or am i wrong I value your opinion so you can be cruel if you want to,
 
bkenn14 said:
why do people buy the Irish Times when they can clearly see the low level of commitment to investigative journalism in this article
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Investigative journalism is expensive. The Irish Times no longer has the resources to do it; none of the Irish papers do.

The IT tries to differentiate itself from the other newpapes by offering opinion. They report pretty much the same news that the other Irish dailies do, often relying on the same news services. What the IT has that you won't get elsewhere is a stable of columnists offering opinion/comment/analysis. You like that, or you don't; that's what determines whether you buy the Irish Times or not.
 
bkenn14 said:
I know well where you are coming from,
The Article as written is causing lots of disagreements on here, and is doing nothing to have a proper debate around homelessness,
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I agree completely. Our media generally frames topics in highly emotive terms and then look for solutions, but emotion is the enemy of reason so their input makes it less likely that we'll end up with good solutions. RTE are, in my opinion, particularly bad at doing this.
bkenn14 said:
If the Article was written with a high level of of Investigative Journalism at its core we would be having a different conversation,
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If a high level of investigative journalism was a prerequisite to get an article published then this emotive fluff piece would never have been published. It neither informed the reader on the broader topic or created a platform for a meaningful discussion.
bkenn14 said:
Out of interest can you see how the article is of poor quality,
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Yes, it was very poor quality.
 
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