Hounding The Homeless

Anthony McIntyre ☠ If there is something charitable about hounding homeless people out of their hostel accommodation and onto the streets perhaps someone in management at the McGwire House hostel in Waterford city, run by the charity Depaul, might come forward to proffer an explanation.

Two men were recently expelled from the hostel for five nights. One one of them has lived there for the past three years. The stated reason for the temporary expulsion was that a fire alarm had gone off when there was no fire. Management took the view that it could only have been the result of human agency rather than the use of equipment not fit for purpose either through shoddy installation or poor maintenance. The letter sent by management to one of the residents stated that the reason he was being thrown to the streets for five days was 'suspected tampering.'

The hostel management in its limited wisdom and skewed sense of justice came to a conclusion that residents it deemed guilty of “suspected tampering” could be turfed out on the street without any hearing, due process or natural justice.

An independent councillor, Donal Barry, rubbished this guilty until proven innocent perspective:

You cannot be evicting people on the suggestion that you did something wrong. It’s fundamental that you’re innocent until you’re proven guilty.

He has has called on the hostel to come to its senses and desist from evicting the man.

The punitive regime for controlling the homeless is not in accordance with a compassionate society. It more resembles how prisons in the North operated where the appearance of a prisoner before an adjudication process was evidence of guilt. This invariably resulted in them being sent to solitary for a stretch where the unfortunate was deprived of their bed as a temporary punishment. In defence of that harsh penal regime, people were at least placed in cells and not forced to sleep beneath the stars.

One of the men is currently barricaded into his room, exercising his right to accommodation and disputing any management prerogative to force people to sleep on the streets. TPQ spoke by phone to him this morning. He was distraught and distressed by the dilemma he was in. Because he refused to acquiesce in the decision to throw him out on the streets for five days he has now been told that he is to be permanently evicted. Fearful to leave his room and risk enduring a permanent life without shelter, he relies on fellow residents to pass food and sustenance to him via a bag attached to a rope but is wary that they too will be targeted for making this humanitarian gesture.

The man previously told The Journal that:

I’m in my 60s and I don’t have anywhere else to go . . . I could not leave this room, it’s the only thing that I actually have right now in my life. That’s why I feel so humiliated here . . . there’s no presumption of innocence here, they just go to extremes.

He added that if evicted he 'would be on the street with nothing.'

In his conversation with TPQ he claimed:

The facts are: They have no CCTV footage. No physical evidence the alarm was deliberately triggered . . . eviction says on 'suspicion'. Person with me insisted I did not do anything . . . he got put out for 5 days as well. They ruled out malfunction. Another man escaped same treatment twenty four hours earlier because he was talking to three staff at time he was 'suspected' of triggering an alarm.

At present this society faces what is an unprecedented and unmitigated homelessness crisis which is growing worse with population outstripping homes-built by a ratio of 4:1. It is an emergency which both the government with its promises and the opposition with its bombast seems either unable or unfit to solve. There can be no justification for what is ostensibly a charity to treat residents as if they are in a penal colony.

Is Depaul a charity or a racket? The so called charity told the Journal that it was at all times obeying its normal policies and procedures. Which means that punishment is normalised and institutionalised. Hostels for the homeless should be run in the spirit of charity where the people taking up residence are not there for anything they have done but as a result of what has been done to them. What next for Depaul - handcuffs, pepper spray and watercannon?

As pointed out by Donal Barry, Waterford City and County Council as a funder has an obligation to ensure that charities do not abuse their status, giving rise to stories of abuse reminiscent of closed institutions like prisons and mental health hospitals.

The curtain should be brought down on this sorry spectacle immediately. Closing eyes, ears and doors to the homeless is chicanery not charity.

⏩Follow on Twitter @AnthonyMcIntyre.