A homeless family of four with two autistic children living in a tent are pleading with the Taoiseach to help them find a home.
The working family have been told they earn too much to qualify for Government support because they’re above means-tested income thresholds.
Only one of the parents is working at the moment, in retail, yet they are still considered by the housing authorities to be too well-off to get any State help.
Read More: Ireland's definition of homelessness 'neglecting' true nature of crisis
A desperate father, Graham King, gave this message to the Irish Mirror for the Taoiseach: “I am pleading, please, put families first, it doesn’t take much.
“I have two autistic kids who need a house, they can’t just be walking the fields all day.
“And I have a wife who works hard all week, she just wants to be able to come home, to a home, and put her feet up after a long day.”
Mr King said he is especially fearful for the welfare of his family as the cold evenings begin to draw in.
He said: “We’re in trouble, the tent is well-insulated, we’ve every type of blanket known to man in there, but we could still see our own breath the last evening.”
Mr King said the family does not want a council house, because they believe others are more deserving of the free or subsidised accommodation.
The couple have the required one month’s deposit for any private landlord too, but Mr King said he feels that they are not wanted as renters because they are a family.
People Before Profit TD, Richard Boyd Barrett, told the Mirror that income thresholds are so low to qualify for State support that it is keeping thousands of families homeless.
A spokeswoman for Tipperary County Council confirmed to the Mirror that the family with one working don’t qualify under their income threshold criteria.
Graham, 45, his wife Patricia, 30 and their children Grayson, 10 and Priya, nine, are now entering their seventh week living on the side of the road.
Mr King, who has back problems, sleeps in the family car, a Kia, while the two children sleep with their mother in the tent.
The first tent they had was one left over from Electric Picnic, but they now have a larger one which was donated to them by a kind stranger.
They have pitched their tent at a camping site, Castlelough in Tipperary, where they have access to running water and some electricity.
The family has been homeless since the end of August.
They had been living with a family member before that.
Graham and Patricia celebrated their 10th wedding anniversary last month and were able to go on a family holiday to Spain that they had pre-booked before they became homeless.
They returned from their anniversary holiday to their homeless situation again.
Graham talked exclusively to the Irish Mirror about his family’s dire predicament.
His daughter Priya, which means ‘beloved’ in Sanskrit, has Level 1 autism, but her father says it doesn’t hold her back too much.
She attends mainstream school and her father describes her as “a social butterfly.”
Grayson has Level 2 autism and is a little more difficult to manage.
He is oblivious to his surroundings sometimes.
Graham said he knows he is homeless, but that it doesn’t register at times because he is “in his own world.”
It has been more difficult to get appropriate schooling for Grayson, but special education has been secured.
Graham added: “When we applied for emergency accommodation, the woman behind the counter added up our incomes and she didn’t even finish the paperwork, she just said, ‘no, you’re not entitled to it.’
“I am on disability and I care for the kids, my wife works.
“We know we’re over the threshold, all we want is help with two things, that’s emergency accommodation and, or, not even a council house, we don’t want a council house because we’re not entitled to one, we’re not willing to take it off someone that deserves it.
“All we want is someone to twist the arm of an auctioneer or a landlord that would rent to us, that’s all we want.”
Mr King feels so exasperated with the State that he can’t get anything for a working family.
He said: “Patricia, she feels so upset, she’s paying tax money every week, and her tax money, they take that, but then they say, ‘there’s nothing we can do for you.’
“We’re paying taxes for nothing.”
Mr Boyd Barrett said that low thresholds are trapping families in homeless ness because they don’t qualify for supports.
He said: “The Government has broken a promise to do something about that because successive governments including this one promised to raise these thresholds, or to deliver as an alternative affordable houses, affordable rental or affordable purchase.
“This is a really shameful example, but there are thousands more working families who are caught up in this and more will have been caught up in it after the Budget.”
Mr King said that local Labour TD and former party leader, Alan Kelly, had “put his neck out” trying to help them too.
A spokeswoman for Tipperary County Council told the Mirror: “We are aware that they are currently living in a tent.
“Whilst there are significant supply issues with rented accommodation in the Nenagh area at this point in time, they are unfortunately well in excess of the social housing income limits.”
The Department of Housing and Minister Darragh O’Brien were offered the opportunity to comment on this case, but no response was received.
The family say they have also written directly to Mr O’Brien, but got no reply either.
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