The mother of a boy with Down Syndrome has told how the family will be made homeless on Thursday, saying: “I don’t know where we will go.”
Carer and healthcare worker Natasha White applied for housing as a medical priority for her son Andre, 14, who has Down Syndrome, autism, and a form of juvenile arthritis. But the local council refused them, saying a home of their own would not improve his condition.
Now Natasha, 37, and her three children - Andre, 14, Carter, 9, and Cali, 5 - have to leave their rented house in Dublin’s Ballyfermot, as the landlord is selling up.
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She told the Irish Mirror their only option is a homeless hub - but there is no appropriate hub for them available at the moment.
“With just a day to go, I don’t know where we will be. I’m having panic attacks, I can’t eat or sleep,” she said. “I need help. At this stage, I’m all out of options. We just need a place to call home.”
The desperate mum explained: “This will be the third time we’ve moved. Each time it happens, Andre doesn’t understand it and he can’t cope. It causes him to regress, get depressed, have meltdowns and lash out.”
Andre attends a special school and receives therapy treatments in Stewarts Hospital, and is in the medical care of Our Lady’s Children’s Hospital.
“I provided a 15-page medical priority application, with support letters from hospital consultants, therapists, doctors, schools. The doctors say he can’t go into homeless accommodation as it will compromise his health and yet we’ve been refused medical priority.”
Andre’s younger brother Carter has ADHD and severe anxiety, and is in the care of the HSE’s Child and Adolescent Mental Health Services.
Natasha and her family have to leave as the landlord must sell due to financial pressures. They were given notice in January and since then, Natasha has been trying to find a new home to rent as a HAP tenant.
However, with just a few hundred rental properties across the nation, she has been unable to find one. She said: “I’ve been trying for months and months and getting nowhere. We can’t even get a viewing. It’s like banging your head off the wall.”
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The local council tried to buy the house - so the family could continue to rent it. But an inspection survey found an attic conversion made it an unsuitable dwelling.
Labour Senator Rebecca Moynihan has been assisting their case. She said: “There are lots of applications for medical priority but Natasha’s son has a very clear intellectual and physical disability. There is no way someone like him shouldn’t qualify.
“As he doesn’t have medical priority, they are getting their severe housing situation met by private rental sector, when it should be the state that’s providing it. It means they are at the mercy of evictions and insecurity.”
Having received the refusal from South Dublin County Council, the Senator is trying to fast-track an emergency application for the family to Dublin City Council.
Mike Allen from Focus Ireland said it is an example of the department finding problems instead of solutions to them. “It puts vulnerable people at risk of homelessness. This is the cause of enormous damage to this mother and her children.”
Natasha said: “My kids are devastated. I don’t even have anywhere I can tell them we’re going. I’ve worked since I was a teenager in healthcare, and only went part-time because of Andre’s needs. But it makes me feel like a failure.
“The least we deserve is a home to call our own. Somewhere I can keep them safe and content.”
Dublin City Council said: This family has been in contact in relation to making a social housing application and this will be assessed under the current Scheme of Letting Priorities.”
Housing Minister Darragh O’Brien said: “Preventing people from entering into homelessness and to exit from it into safe and secure tenancies is a priority for me and my Department. The continued increase in the numbers experiencing homelessness is very disturbing. We are doing everything we can to reverse this trend.”
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