In many articles over the last number of years, this column has scrupulously avoided the use of the personal pronoun ‘I’.
his piece will depart from that practice to write about personal experiences about housing, and particularly about homelessness, that have deeply affected these writings.
The background is provided to explain why and how I have learned that feelings and emotions can be so damaging when trying to make decisions about housing.
I originally qualified as an architect, like my father before me. When we were children, as a city architect he oversaw the demolition of some of the last of the worst housing slums, as well as the development of huge new public housing schemes.
Occasionally on the way home from school he’d stop and bring us along for site visits. The memory of the smell during one visit to a condemned tenement never left me. It persuaded me that providing new social housing was a wonderful achievement.
When I was studying architecture, he used to warn me about what he called “the terrible sin” of using public housing to experiment on people who had no choice about where or how they lived.
He saw architects treating them as “human guinea pigs” for the latest design fashion. With great shame, he recognised that he too had done this as a young man.
If I seem intemperate when writing about housing, it’s because, over a lifetime, I have learned about the vulnerability of those who need the great goodness that is public and social housing. Their needs make easily exploited publicity material for unscrupulous careerists.
Through the Housing Agency I have learned about the unsung heroism of ordinary and anonymous local authority housing officers trying to do their job.
They often have to cope with a blizzard of the opinionated as well as the unelected — do-gooders who see themselves as some type of saviours. Most people in social housing just want to live in a house like everyone else. They certainly do not want or need to be saved.
If bad housing design makes me emotional, then the homeless industry makes me so angry that I have to button down even more, so that I can function professionally. The threat, risk and finally the reality of homelessness have dogged me and my family for most of my adult life.
I’m told I can appear to lack empathy because I always try to examine housing on the basis of evidence, facts and the forces that drive markets — refusing to be drawn into the human tragedies that are often involved.
In reality it’s a desperate attempt to remain calm and objective in the face of waves of harm being caused by those who use the powerful emotions about housing to further their own agenda.
The sheer emotionalism of everything around housing distorts thinking in ways that often only makes things even worse.
When my father left the public service, he became involved with a company that built a lot of housing. Barely into my teens I once tried to smart-alec him by saying he was “only a property speculator” — a phrase I had recently learned from the radio.
For the only time in his life, he became really hurt and angry with me. He said making well-designed, affordable homes for people was something he was proud of — despite the risks involved for him.
Too soon and too late, I learned about the risk-taking side of building houses. We soon began to see writs being served to the door as the housing market collapsed and banks withdrew credit.
I experienced homelessness for the first time when my parents’ home was repossessed on foot of a bank guarantee judgment.
I had just married but was faced with the shock of never being able to go back home, losing every fixture of childhood; seeing a proud man losing the house that he had designed and built; my mother and sister bewildered and frightened; the huge old family dog being put down to prepare for life in a tiny flat.
Losing our home felt like the worst imaginable Dickensian nightmare, accompanied by a tidal wave of emotions, fear, shame, loss of friends and community support. It was a sort of death.
Soon my parents, supported by their children, found a small, affordable flat in the Mespil Estate in town. It is easily overlooked that a lot of homelessness remains invisible because families step in to support each other.
Then homelessness suddenly happened to them again. An eviction, following the sale of their supposedly secure flat to investors. Again, I witnessed my parents, now older and in ill health, enduring this eviction episode that proved to be the last straw from which they never really recovered.
Once again, the invisible supports of relations eventually found them nearby accommodation where they lived until he died, and she moved into my house.
Their encounters with homelessness were soon followed by my own. Divorce, the loss of access to the family home — that other hidden homelessness.
There was more helpless searching for something to rent nearby big enough for my children and I because I do not drive.
When I finally settled, I received my own eviction notice. My place was being repossessed from my landlord. That fear, loss and helplessness returned again, amplified by the faces of my children as they were faced with further disruption — not to mention my own trying to juggle eviction along with a marital separation.
The irony was not lost on me of being chair of the Housing Agency discussing security of tenancies and homelessness during this time.
When I say homelessness is normal, I never doubt its deep trauma. I speak from personal experience, not just about the headline-grabbing pictures of street sleepers, or huddled families in a garda station at midnight.
There is housing trauma all over Ireland every day. Families fall out, debts go wrong, lives turn upside down. Housing hurts.
Much of the time this pain is dealt with privately; we are a decent people on this island — ordinary, compassionate people selflessly doing the right thing for each other, out of the spotlight.
Dealing with housing, and especially homelessness, means we all need to do our best to try to hold on to addressing cold, hard practicalities — sometimes in spite of our deep personal feelings.
The emotional trauma of housing can be a distracting symptom. Solutions will only come from addressing the causes with cold, hard facts, however harsh that may sometimes sound.
Conor Skehan is a former chair of the Housing Agency
