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From prosperity to poverty
22 November 2009 By Martha Kearns
It’s 8.20amon a bitterly cold November morning and, already, dozens of people have started to queue outside a nondescript building in Dublin’s Smithfield. Wrapped up against the harsh elements, every strand of Irish society is here. Those waiting in line include elderly inner-city Dubliners, non-Irish people hauling suitcases behind them and young, well dressed, middle-class people in their 20s and 30s.
Some chat to each other, shake hands and share a joke when they meet someone they’ve seen here before. But most wait with their hands dug into their pockets, shifting from foot to foot to keep the cold out and keep their gaze fixed on the concrete path below them, not making eye contact with others in the queue or passers-by.
At 9am,those running the Capuchin Day Centre for Homeless People on Bow Street open the doors and start handing out the food parcels - blue plastic carrier bags filled with staples such as bread, sugar, tea, milk, butter, cheese, rashers, sausages, frozen food and tins of beans. By then, the queue has stretched to around 300 people, with another 700 collecting parcels throughout the morning.
Volunteers at the Capuchin centre have been giving out food parcels every week for the past 40 years, but demand has never been so high. This time last year, those waiting for the parcels numbered 350 people. Now, the usual number each Wednesday morning is 1,000 people.
Inside the centre, volunteers are preparing hundreds of plates of toast and scrambled eggs for the hot breakfasts they give out to around 200 people every day.
Sitting on benches in a warm hall, the hot tea and food heats them up before they head back out onto the streets. As soon as the tables are cleared, the volunteers start cleaning the plates, cups and cutlery, before starting preparations for the lunch where they will feed 450 people. The numbers turning up for breakfast and lunch have doubled since last year.
Those working at the centre are amazed at the growing figures. ‘‘There are more people looking for our help now than there was in the 1980s," says one long-term volunteer.
But the most striking change is the profile of those using the services. No longer is it only the homeless that come to the centre, which is run by Capuchin Franciscan Order. There are now many young faces in the queue; single, well-dressed, educated people; mothers with their children in expensive buggies; and middle-aged men who, up until last year, had a secure foothold on the business ladder.
Most don’t want to talk. Those who do don’t want their names revealed or agree to be identified only because they are far from home. Shame is the big factor. It is one of the words that keeps cropping up among those who work with the group that Brother Kevin Crowley, the centre’s director, defines as ‘‘the new poor’’.
Crowley says many are embarrassed to be using the services, which they previously would have regarded as only for the homeless.
However, the shame of being seen getting help is overridden by the overwhelming difficulties people are facing, and the numbers attending the centre have increased ‘‘immensely’’ in the last 12months ‘‘since the start of the recession’’.
‘‘So many people are ashamed to come looking for help," says Crowley. ‘‘They find it very difficult. Some people come along who are not homeless and they make themselves known. They say, ‘Look, I’m not homeless, but I am desperate for food’ and they are concerned that things are going to get worse if they do not get help.
‘‘We are meeting a lot of people who are coming here for the first time. A lot of people who have lost their jobs and, even though they can make ends meet, are finding it difficult to meet their mortgage payments."
One man came to the centre a few weeks ago, and told Crowley that it was his first time coming there. ‘‘He told me: ‘I have four children, I have lost my job and I’m just at my wits’ end as to where I am going to get the money to pay the mortgage on my house’. We have a new poor in this country.
‘‘Our policy is that we don’t ask questions and we do not refuse anyone food. Being followers of St Francis, our motto is to give to everyone that is in need."
Crowley says the new people coming to the centre are living in fear of the future and of what was going to happen to them and their homes. ‘‘The biggest thing we are seeing is that people are worried about losing their homes. People who were never out of work are now, and they can’t pay their mortgages. They have a fear themselves of ending up on the streets," he says.
The scenes at the Capuchin centre are reflective of what is happening across the country. The profile of people attending is similar to that seen by the Society of St Vincent de Paul (SVP). SVP is the largest voluntary charitable organisation in Ireland, with a membership of 9,500 volunteers and has 1,200 conferences or local groups across the country. It is now spending more than €50 million per year on food, energy, education and direct financial help.
Its main aim, according to its national president Mairéad Bushnell, is to ‘‘put food on the table, heat in the home and help children remain in school’’. However, she says that, on a daily basis, volunteers are now dealing with people crumbling under large debts and in despair, trying to make ends meet. She says the SVP volunteers neither have the ‘‘skills nor capacity to solve all of the problems of those in huge debt, or in psychological distress brought on by the loss of their jobs or the shortage of money’’.
Calls for assistance are up by more than a third in many of the SVP conferences - and by 50 per cent in Dublin. Volunteers are reporting that people who were donating to the charity a year ago are now coming to them ‘‘in grave danger of severe poverty’’.
More than 60 per cent of callers to its Dublin regional office are from households with children, and the most frequent request is for help to buy food, pay utility bills and for education. More than 25 per cent of the calls are from people contacting the SVP for the first time. Many of them had been past donors.
‘‘What all of us on the ground are now seeing is people we have never seen before - they are a new poor, a middle-class poor who are falling into despair and poverty," says Bushnell.
Bushnell, who volunteers in Cork city, says many of those now looking for help have either lost their jobs or are small business people who have run into serious trouble with their companies.
She says most of these people come to them through referrals from friends and have contacted the SVP on its many confidential mobile phone numbers as they were ashamed of coming forward in person.
‘‘It is hard to come to the St Vincent de Paul. It takes a lot of courage to do it, as it is usually seen as a refuge for people who are destitute," says Bushnell.
She says people are likening the recession to the one experienced in the 1980s,but with one crucial difference: back in the 1980s, people had no money, but didn’t owe money either.
‘‘People wouldn’t lend us money. You couldn’t get a loan for a washing machine in those days, but now lots of people have huge debts. We can’t do anything about those huge debts. We are into the bread and butter, putting food on the table and keeping the children at school or college," says Bushnell.
‘‘Some of the businesspeople this time last year owned their own company, employing about ten people, and donated to us. Now, they are coming to us looking for help," she says.
According to SVP’s national vice-president, John Monaghan, many of these middleclass families are now relying on their child benefit to pay for food, heat and accommodation.
‘‘These people woke up this morning worried sick about how they were going to feed their children or heat their homes," he says.
Bushnell says that, up until now, middle income or middle-class people would never have thought of coming to the SVP. ‘‘This is why we are telling our volunteers to get out there and say: here we are, can we help, and here is our mobile number. We give them supermarket vouchers, because they are anonymous, so there is no disgrace when they hand them in at the counter. They are not SVP vouchers, there isn’t such a thing."
However, the SVP work is not all about fuel and food vouchers; members of the society can also accompany business people or individuals to the state’s Money Advice and Budgeting Service (Mabs). It has also set up special groups to help people with large debts, and has produced guidelines for its nationwide conferences on how to deal with people with mortgage arrears and new approaches to dealing with moneylenders.
‘‘We have a lot of volunteers with expertise in law or finance, and they can accompany the person in trouble to the bank or building society or credit union. We can also go with them to Mabs and they write down all their debts, and the people in Mabs work out that if we could give them €50 or €60 a week they might be able to divert their small available income into their debts," says Bushnell. ‘‘We can’t do anything about the big debts, but we can keep the home fires burning."
Bushnell adds that there are no specific areas of the country where the new poverty is worse. ‘‘It’s everywhere. In rural Ireland, the people might be slower to come for help.
Many of these are people who are worth money [in terms of the property or land they own] but they do not have any. It is facetious for people to say that they are sitting on land and they should sell it. These people would rather starve than sell their land.
‘‘We are worried about these people, as they won’t go for help. We are also extremely worried about elderly people living alone. Elderly people would sit in front of a fire of two logs instead of lighting a big fire, that’s because they are afraid they will run out.
They don’t realise that we can supply them with turf and coal, or give them help to pay their ESB bill or get some oil."
The Simon Communities of Ireland, which every year deliver services to around 5,000 people who are homeless or are at danger of becoming homeless, have also seen increases in the numbers of people using its services. The Dublin Simon Community recently celebrated its 40th anniversary and, speaking at an event to mark the date, its chief executive Sam McGuinness says the number of new people sleeping rough in the capital has increased.
He says the new homeless population is a young one, with more than 50 per cent under the age of 35, and volunteers at its Harcourt Street hostel meeting a worrying number of ‘first-time’ homeless. ‘‘I haven’t seen a sharp edge to it, but I’d say it’s a trickle now that may just be the start," says McGuinness.
The Midlands Simon Community has also experienced a 25 per cent increase in referrals from local authorities to its regional settlement service, which operates across Laois, Longford, Offaly and Westmeath.
But Niamh Randall, national research and policy manager of the Simon Communities of Ireland, says the increase could be due to a number of factors including the recession:
‘‘It’s not as simple as cause and effect."
She says while there are new pressures on people, it is too early to predict whether or not there is a significant change in the types of people seeking its services.
‘‘We would find that when people hit a crisis they don’t always turn to homeless services like ourselves. If you think what you might do yourself - you might go to friends or family, borrow or sell something or go to Mabs first, so it tends to be a smaller trickle into homeless services," says Randall.
‘‘People exhaust all other avenues first, but some of the services are seeing new presenters [applicants] who would be younger than previous presenters, especially in urban areas."
She adds that it is important not to have a two-tier system of housing need, ‘‘divided between the people who the Celtic tiger left behind and were always in need, and other people who have lost a lot recently and are now in need. Having a home is an absolute need, no matter where you come from or how you got there’’.
Back at the Capuchin Day Centre, the retired Dublin man at the front of the queue says that getting the food parcel every Wednesday morning means his pension can stretch a bit further for the rest of the week.
Others, he says, ‘‘rely totally on it’’.
‘‘I’m one of the lucky ones as I have a better start, but some of the people here come here because it’s an absolute necessity."
The man, who did not want to be named, has been coming for food parcels for the past four or five years and also comes to the centre every morning for his breakfast. He has noticed massive changes this year.
‘‘You would never have seen so many young people here before. There are lots of people here with families. It would be embarrassing for a lot of people as they don’t want people to know they come here," he says. ‘‘It’s cold this morning, so there are not as many people queuing, they will come later so they don’t have to wait in the cold.
Sometimes, the queue is all the way down the road and around the corner."
One of the new young people is in his 30s, from Dublin and recently unemployed. ‘‘I am trying to find work, but it’s not that easy.
There is nothing out there," says the man, who is also now homeless and living in a hostel.
With his Puma runners and stylish clothes, another 27-year-old man couldn’t look more out of place at the centre. The man, who did not want to be named, came to Ireland from Romania three years ago to work on building sites during the construction boom, but lost his job last year.
Although he has a degree in social work, he is unable to find a job and believes that when he does get an interview he is discriminated against because of the reputation Romanians have in Ireland. According to St Vincent de Paul statistics, migrants are one of the groups suffering the most in the downturn.
He is now selling tickets on the street for the Irish Cancer Society, and lives in a one bedroomed flat with his mother, father, brother, sister and two small children.
‘‘Some people say why don’t we go home, but our home is here now. It would be very hard to go home now - there are no jobs at home, and it is expensive to live there and we don’t have a house there," he says. ‘‘Coming here to get the food parcel means that we can spend the money we have on rent and food for the rest of the week."
Away from the food queues, there are many other heartbreaking stories. John, who has sought help from the St Vincent de Paul, is a lone parent who has shared custody of his daughter. He recently lost his job and is getting no support from the state. In last April’s budget, he lost his rent supplement allowance. He has gone back to college to try and upskill, and now comes to the SVP which pays for his rent and his bus fares to and from college.
Another lone parent who has turned to the SVP for help has two children, and has also recently returned to education. She has had to come to the SVP for money to pay for creche fees and food.
For those working in the sector, they believe that things will only get worse before they get better. Niamh Randall from Simon says there is a fear that next month’s budget will further hit those who are most at risk of becoming homeless. The rent supplement was cut in last year’s budget, and again in the supplementary budget last April. There are 91,000 households in receipt of rent supplements, an increase of 52 per cent since the end of 2007.
‘‘The rent supplement is often a safety net for those who have fallen through all the other cracks. Our concern is that if there is further tightening up of the restrictions, then more people will slip out of housing and into homelessness," she says.
‘‘Our services around the country are under serious pressure in terms of increased demand for provision, and in terms of reductions of statutory funding and uncertainty in terms of ongoing donations.
‘‘We are facing into a huge area of uncertainty.
Homelessness was an issue before the economic downturn, and it certainly wasn’t cured during the Celtic tiger. The people we worked with certainly did not benefit from the Celtic tiger at all. What is happening now is the economic downturn is also having an impact on those who are vulnerable and living on the margins."
Mairéad Bushnell of SVP says it is difficult to predict how much worse things can get. ‘‘We are only starting out on this path.
We are all feeling our way. But at least we feel that if these people know we care about them, even if we just sit with them while they cry, then we might be able to help in some way," she says.
‘‘That’s another new thing we’ve noticed - people are literally breaking down crying in front of us. That hasn’t happened regularly for at least 15 to 20y ears. They are coming to us in desperation, looking for food, not just for Christmas, which used to be the case, but for food to survive from day to day," says Bushnell.
In the SVP’s pre-budget submission, it voices the fear that cuts in Budget 2010 could push many vulnerable people over the edge. It urges the government to avoid decisions that would provide short-term financial benefits to the exchequer but have harmful long-term social consequences.
Brother Crowley of the Capuchin centre is also fearful of the budget and its implications on the ability of voluntary organisations to continue doing its work.
‘‘We still depend an awful lot on the generosity of people for funding. Without that, we would find it impossible to keep the centre running. Our running costs are more than €1 million for the year. Of that, we get €450,000 from the government and we have to raise the rest ourselves," he says.
The food given to people at the centre is bought by the Capuchins from the donated money, while some of the food for the parcels is donated from companies.
For the people themselves, Crowley fears that many, especially those in the middle classes, are leaving it too late to get help. He says that, as Christmas approaches, more pressure is being piled on families.
‘‘The anxiety increases coming up to Christmas, and there is a ridiculous amount of money being spent on unnecessary items while there are so many disadvantaged people trying to make ends meet. Parents are trying to satisfy the children. . .buying more and getting into debt, that’s a huge problem.
My real concern in these situations is that children are being neglected. The main thing is food, heat and family support.
When you have all the anxiety of looking to the future, it’s hard to be at peace." Crowley says his greatest fear is that things are going to get much worse, and that the queues outside the centre are going to continue to grow.
‘‘Our main concern is to be available to these people, to help them, show them respect, love, compassion and kindness. Being followers of St Francis, we started the centre to help people who were on the streets, to give them dignity, love and kindness," he says.
‘‘They get respect, and they are treated like human beings. As far as we are concerned, they are members of our family."
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