A pensioner who has just three weeks to find a new home said she feels like she "doesn't exist".
Micheline Walsh, 78, revealed how she was scrambling to find housing while caring for her elderly stroke victim husband. She fears that their age will mean they are too old to wait for a place on a lengthy housing list.
Micheline said she could no longer pay the rent after she lost her job as an administrator for a language school during the pandemic. The couple was given a six months notice to quit the Dublin home she lived in by her landlord last November but that was stalled by the eviction ban, the Irish Mirror reports.
Read more: Nearly 12,000 people in homeless emergency accommodation in March
Now the pair is scrambling to find a new home after the eviction ban was lifted at a time of rental shortage. Speaking to RTE Radio 1, Micheline said her imminent notice to quit her home brings up "images of the Famine".
She said: "We've been in our house for seven years. The rent was paid by our pension and my part-time job. When Covid came, my part-time job went.
"The language school couldn’t have students. Now the landlord is selling the property. That’s the reason we have to move."
Micheline explained that her husband couldn't work because of his stroke and now that she doesn't have a job, all they have is their pensions. She added: "So there is no way that we can pay anything near the rents that are being asked. We registered on the housing list, which was a major effort.
"My husband had a very bad stroke. He lost his sight in half of each eye, lost the ability to read, he’s not steady on his feet, and he gets seizures. It’s a challenging situation."
Micheline said the pair even got accepted for the Housing Assistance Payment (HAP) but have had no luck in finding a landlord who accepted HAP tenants. She said: "We can’t move in with somebody because that takes us off the housing list. We would be deemed not homeless."
She added: "Nobody in my family has the extra room, bearing in my mind my husband has brain damage and needs a lot of care and attention. It is really not fair to bring that into someone else’s home arrangement. You can’t expect someone else to put up with that."
Now, Micheline and her husband are just three weeks away from losing their home and she said there is "nowhere to go". She said: "I spoke to the homeless section and asked, ‘What will happen when I ring you and say we need accommodation?’
"They said we’ll put in a request to central allocations for you to be placed in a homeless hostel. How am I going to manage? How long is that for?
"Is that for one night? Do I have to ring and say we need another night? It’s unthinkable."
Micheline said she felt embarrassed and shameful. "Why am I here? I had a naïve idea that the State helps you when you are old.
"That’s the job of the State, isn’t it: to look after the vulnerable? To me, homelessness was someone at the side of the street.
"Eviction brings up images of the Famine, images of dirt, inability to clean yourself, nowhere to sleep. I feel embarrassed."
She added: "We’re on the housing list, but I don’t expect to get anything in my lifetime. How many years left do I have, realistically speaking? If I get 10 years, I would be delighted. I haven’t got time to wait on the list. I just feel I don’t exist."
The eviction ban was in place from October 31 until it was controversially lifted on March 31. Homelessness campaigners warned that lifting it would cause a tsunami of evictions.
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