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Serdecznie zapraszamy do zapoznania się z odcinkami tygodnika TVP Polonii 24 , w których jest mowa o działalności naszej organizacji:

https://polonia24.tvp.pl/76568605/przeglad-polonijnych-portali-internetowych-21032024Barka IE w TVP Polonia/ TVP Polonia on Barka IE

Oraz:

https://polonia24.tvp.pl/76805802/polonia-24-tygodnik-04042024

Housing charities report growing concerns over the number of migrants falling into homelessness

Living in precarious, often overcrowded housing, in sometimes informal arrangements, migrants more than most find themselves at the sharp end of the housing crisis.

Now housing and migrant charities warn the shortage of affordable rental accommodation is increasingly seeing migrants fall into homelessness, sometimes only weeks and months after arriving in the country.

Tomasz Flinik (45), originally from Poland, is one half of the two-person team in the Dublin office of Polish charity Barka, who works with migrants from central and eastern Europe who have fallen through the cracks and ended up homeless.

Every day Flinik says he deals with migrants who have ended up sleeping rough, with the problem getting worse in recent times. “The situation has become very difficult … The work has doubled and tripled and more in comparison to last year,” he says.

Flinik, with the assistance of a translator, says the majority of migrants he works with would be recent arrivals from eastern Europe who have failed to find housing in Dublin.

“People usually come with some money but it is only enough to pay for the first few days, or week or two, to pay for a hostel, then they run out of money,” he says.

“With the difficult housing situation, they simply end up on the streets,” he says. “People we meet usually have been on the streets not years or months but a couple of weeks,” he adds.

Flinik, who was placed into an orphanage aged 11 in Poland and later a series of juvenile detention centres, credits Barka with turning his own life around.

As a young man he was moved into one of the charity’s residential communities on a farm outside the city of Poznań, set up to mainly assist people coming out of prison, homelessness or addiction.

More than two decades later he has gone on to become a team leader in Barka, running the same residential community before moving to Ireland a year ago.

With funding from Dublin City Council, the charity assists European Union migrants who wish to leave Ireland and return home.

Romania was the most popular country individuals sought help returning to over the past two years, followed by Poland, then Lithuania and Latvia.

In the first three months of this year Barka helped 51 migrants return home, twice the number during the same period the year before.

“The longer you live on the street, the more difficult it is to get out … It is catching people before they become rooted and entrenched, catching them and supporting them in going home,” Flinik says.

Staff in housing and homeless charities say it is commonly the case that migrants from other EU countries will have lined up short-term informal housing arrangements ahead of arriving in the country.

This is usually where a family member, friend or acquaintance agrees to put them up, with the intention they will move on into their own accommodation once they find their feet.

Ciara McGrath, a manager in homeless charity Crosscare’s housing and welfare information service, says people in these informal arrangements were at real risk of homelessness.

Despite being able to find employment quickly, the person is often unable to find a place of their own in the private rental market. “They find they can’t exit, there’s nowhere to move to,” she says.

After a period of months the informal arrangement then reaches a “crisis point” and breaks down, leaving the person or family homeless, she says.

Comparatively good wages and easy-to-find employment were a strong factor pulling people here, she says.

“If they don’t have a job on Tuesday they’ll have one the next Tuesday … There’s work for people, there’s plenty of work, it’s housing that’s the problem,” she says.

Many migrants were more likely to try to stick it out, even if it meant “sofa surfing” or living in seriously overcrowded housing, she says.

“We see situations of exploitation, people paying €400 or €600 and sharing a room with seven other guys,” she says.

For EU nationals who become homeless, some can end up “stuck” as they may not be eligible for social housing supports or the Housing Assistance Payment (Hap) to help secure private rental housing.

Current pressure on emergency accommodation meant it was now “much more of a struggle” to get someone in this situation a bed in homeless services, McGrath says.

There was also a noticeable increase in the numbers of families facing homelessness. “We are seeing well-established migrant families who are here years getting a notice to quit,” McGrath says.

Crosscare has been receiving “desperate emails” from families being evicted from homes where they had set down roots with their children, unable to find somewhere else in the same area, she says.

As a result of the shortage of affordable rental properties, many families were settling for overcrowded living conditions. “Two parents with a child might end up in a room in a house share with another migrant,” McGrath says.

Dermot Murphy, director of services at housing charity Depaul, agrees that migrants would more commonly be in “precarious” housing.

This could be subletting or sharing a room, potentially without the landlord’s knowledge, which he says “leaves them quite exposed to becoming homeless very quickly”.

While some homeless migrants might have arrived in the country with addiction or mental health problems, others slipped “through the cracks” after losing their job and being unable to pay rent, he says.

Latest figures from the Dublin Region Homeless Executive (DRHE) show migrants are disproportionately falling into homelessness.

The most recent DRHE monthly report outlined that of the 62 families who presented as homeless in February only half were Irish.

A quarter were families originally from other EU countries, about a fifth were from outside of the EU and a small number were from the UK.

Similarly, of the 141 single adults who became homeless in Dublin in February, 23 per cent were from other EU countries, with nearly half of those coming from Romania. Some 21 per cent were migrants coming from outside of the EU, with Somalia the most common country of origin.

The report said nine of the adults had recently arrived from abroad and four had come to the State on a refugee family reunification scheme.

Nationally, Department of Housing homeless figures show more than 11,740 people were in emergency accommodation in February, with migrants making up more than a third of the 8,369 homeless adults.

Outside the Capuchin Day Centre one Wednesday in mid-April, the faces of those in the queue waiting for meals tells a similar story – a mix of white Irish, African, Eastern European and Asian.

Alan Bailey (72), volunteer co-ordinator at the centre in Smithfield, recalls back when he started volunteering in the 1970s it would provide 20 to 30 meals a day, almost exclusively to Irish men living in homeless hostels.

Speaking in a supply room amid stacks of bread, baby food and boxes of tea bags, Bailey says volunteers are preparing to feed upwards of 700 people at lunch. “Everybody is welcome, you can have six different nationalities at one table and they’ll all get on,” he says.

“During the recession you had a lot of foreign nationals working on buildings, who were left high and dry with no work, no money, so they started coming in. We have all nationalities now,” he says.

The number of food parcels the centre hands out has increased from 1,100 a week to 1,400 in the space of a month, he says. “We do see a huge increase, we can’t put it down to any one group of persons because we don’t ask,” Bailey says.

“We mix well together here, because we’re not asking who you are, what you are, what’s your background. We all sit down together and have our meals,” he says.

Source:https://www.irishtimes.com/ireland/2023/04/22/migrant-homelessness-with-the-difficult-housing-situation-they-simply-end-up-on-the-streets/

Bad tenancies and ignorance of rights have seen more central and eastern European men become homeless in Dublin

Aleksander Kurowski (41), a Pole, spent 12 years working in Ireland before he fell ill in January last year, requiring emergency bowel surgery. His illness, and the long recovery that followed, left him too weak to work.

The illness started a downwards spiral. Not long afterwards Kurowski’s landlord of seven years decided to sell his apartment. He challenged the notice, managing to stay on for a year. Eventually, however, he had to leave, but could not find a home elsewhere.

In May, Kurowski, who worked for a decade as a cleaner and then in a laundry, ended up in a homeless hostel. “It was strange, sometimes I felt frightened,” he says, in a quiet voice. “There was no key to the room so I couldn’t lock the door and people were on drugs.”

With the help of a translator he explains that he stayed for a few days in the Brú Aimsir hostel on Thomas Street, Dublin, before moving in with a friend. Worried about overstaying his welcome, he left after five weeks and found a bed at the Spire Hostel on Malborough Street.

He is just one of a growing number of mostly male central and eastern Europeans becoming homeless, accelerated by precarious tenancies, ignorance about rights and benefits, or, simply, the consequences of exploitation.

Many come with no idea of how hard it is to get a place to stay in Ireland or the cost of living, says Ciara McGrath of Crosscare. “Many of those we meet are in employment but homeless, but also because a lot of people on an industrial wage in Ireland really struggle. The cost of living here is so high money doesn’t go very far.

“They have more precarious living arrangements and often share with other families. We’re seeing people in tenancies for 7-9 years and then landlords decide to sell or renovate,” McGrath tells The Irish Times.

Unemployed

Less than one in 12 of the 535,475 non-Irish people in the State are unemployed, but 22.5 per cent are at risk of poverty compared to 15.7 per cent of Irish people, according to the Economic and Social Research Institute (ESRI). A third own property, compared to nearly 80 per cent of Irish people.

A European national can stay for three months in Ireland with no income, but, with rare exceptions, cannot qualify for benefits. Despite stories to the contrary, most dole applications from new arrivals are refused. After three months they must show that they have a right to reside in the State.

EEA nationals who find work but become unemployed or unfit for work due to illness or injury can qualify for supplementary welfare benefits for up to six months, although social housing benefits only come if they have worked for a year, and have registered as a job seeker.

EU nationals can only be removed from Ireland if they pose a “genuine, present and sufficient serious threat” to the State, according to the 2015 European Communities (Free Movement of Persons) regulations. This, said the Department of Justice, is “not a deportation order”.

Similar rules are laid down by the EU Citizens’ Rights Directive, though some EU states, including Ireland and the UK, are interpreting the rules in such a way that people found guilty of minor offences can be removed.

People from countries that joined the EU since 2004 – mostly eastern Europeans – can qualify for repatriation if they are destitute and are referred by welfare officials to the Department of Justice’s Reception and Integration Agency (RIA).

Route home

Such people are offered a route home as soon as one is “practicable and cost efficient”, said an RIA spokesman. So far this year 55 people from central and eastern European countries have done so.

Some 43 did so to Romania. Four each returned to Slovakia and Hungary; two went back to Lithuania; and one to both Bulgaria and the Czech Republic. Repatriation is not offered twice, so anyone who misses a booked flight will not get a second chance.

A small minority are gaming the system. “Only 3 per cent of people try to use the system to their advantage, but by just offering to send people home you’re sending a message that there’s money for flights. People should know it’s a once-off,” said one source.

Dermot Murphy, director of services at the DePaul homeless charity, says few immigrants want to go back. “It’s not our role to make anybody go home; our principle is to provide people with the best available information so they can make an informed decision.”

Agreeing that a lack of knowledge about housing rights and entitlements is worsening foreign homelessness, Mr Murphy said nearly 5 per cent of newly homeless people who visited the charity in recent months came from Poland. Another 5 per cent came from Romania.

Ewa Sadawska, director of Barka Ireland, which offers its own repatriation aid, has noticed a rise in the number of eastern and central Europeans who have come from England and Scotland sleeping on Dublin’s streets. Many have come because they fear life in a post-Brexit UK, she says.

Since 2011, Barka has helped more than 500 to return home. In the first six months of this year it assisted 37 people – 16 Poles, 10 Lithuanians, six Latvians and four Hungarians. Last year it helped 68.

Try their luck

Most central and eastern Europeans who end up on Dublin’s streets are in their 50s and 60s, says Sadawska.

“Many from the communist generation have the mentality that everything should be provided. Quite a lot of our beneficiaries are 50-plus and have bad English but came to Ireland to try their luck.”

Drinking heavily

Santaro disputes the claim that Brexit is already pushing more central and eastern Europeans to move from the UK to Ireland. So the numbers Mendicity has found are “tiny”.

Figures from Merchant’s Quay Ireland found that a quarter of the 5,600 people who visited it last year were foreigners, including 305 Romanians, 254 Poles, 214 people from African countries and 114 people from the UK. The majority are men, and most are aged between 30-44.

One man there, who came to Ireland in 2003 and worked for years as a chef before he began drinking heavily and became homeless, he says, because he was jailed for three years for stealing a pair of runners

“All my family were heavy alcoholics. I always thought I was strong but now when I look in the mirror I see my father,” says the man, who claims his employer gave him drink as his addiction grew to ensure he finished his shift.

Following his prison term, he says he spent four months sleeping in parks and on the Liffey boardwalk. Today he has a room in a hostel, and works sporadically as a chef. Asked if he would like to return to Poland, he says no.

“I love this city and I see my future here. I haven’t drunk now in five weeks. For me the important thing is not money, it’s my health. I’m not 20 years old anymore. Merchant’s Quay has helped me stand up. I think the people here really care.”

Sorcha Pollak

https://www.irishtimes.com/news/ireland/irish-news/there-was-no-key-to-the-room-so-i-couldn-t-lock-the-door-and-people-were-on-drugs-1.4035462

On 28 – 31 January, representatives of INISE: Baiba Dhidha Mjidho, Magdalena Chwarscianek and Ewa Sadowska took part in a conference on the Milenium Development Goes and Africa’s development organised by the Institute for Cultural Diplomacy ( ICD ) in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia. The conference focused on detailed analises of the geo-political, economic and social situation in selected African countries in relation to the implementation of Milenium Development Goals as well as the prospects for further development after 2015. 

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