The Search for Home
New resource helps Christians engage with the Homelessness Crisis
By Dr Kevin Hargaden
(From the January - March 2020 issue of VOX)
Our friend lives in a one-bedroom flat in an unfashionable part of Dublin. She just about has the proverbial space to swing her cat. She has lived there since the pit of the economic crash, which is why the rent is still affordable.
In the flat next to her, which is the exact same size, six people find their home. She understands that this is legal, because they are all on short-term agreements of either six weeks or three months. Her rotating cast of neighbours come from all over the world but are never from Ireland. They are here to do a job, to complete a course, to learn a little English. They have no rights and they know it.
Irish society is obsessed with property. This is true in an almost comical fashion for the affluent. The colour-rich property supplements that regularly accompany newspapers detail glorious attic conversions in Dalkey, or creative renovations in Oranmore with prose so purple that one wonders if it is satire. (It never is.) Asset-price bubbles are not enriching but the middle-classes welcome news of increasing prices and extol them at dinner parties as if it was good news from the heavens above.
“In one of the wealthiest nations in the history of humanity, we have over 10,000 people officially homeless.”
The concern that the less well off have about property is less ripe for amusement. In one of the wealthiest nations in the history of humanity, we have over 10,000 people officially homeless. It has been that high for most of 2019 and nothing that the Government or civil society is doing will lower it significantly. The official figures hide the much more alarming reality. For one thing, many people do not realise the Government’s numbers exclude rough sleepers. Too often, the numbers are cited without recognising what they imply.
Almost 4,000 children are without a home. They try to do their homework on the beds in hotel rooms. They never see their parents cook a meal. They have nowhere to bring their friends to play. Children can suffer life-long educational, emotional, and social consequences from even a short period of homelessness. Imagine the trauma endured by their parents and guardians trying to care for them as they are bounced from facility to facility, town to town, with no stability and the constant anxiety that things could still get worse.
Yet these situations only scratch the surface of the problems we face. 800 people who have received asylum cannot leave Direct Provision because there is nowhere for them to go. The Government pays subsidies of over €2 million a day to private landlords and vulture funds to massage the figures while committing considerably less to building public housing. There are around 70,000 households on the housing waiting lists, which conservatively could amount to a quarter of a million people in need of provision.
There are uncountable numbers of adults living in less-than-ideal situations with their parents because they cannot afford rents. About 40,000 mortgage-holders have not been able to make a payment in the last two years. The Central Bank estimates that at least half of them will be evicted. On any given night, there are more homes in Dublin available to let to tourists on Airbnb than there are homeless people but our society prioritises the right to make profit more than the responsibility to house your neighbour in need.
“Our society prioritises the right to make profit more than the responsibility to house your neighbour in need.”
The Government has not even begun to account for the people living in emerging tenements in our cities or the license-holding arrangements as operate next door to our friend.
Finding a place to live in Dublin is more expensive than any city in the European Union except Paris. This is not just a problem afflicting our capital. The Government has had to extend rent pressure zone regulations in places as small as Macroom because of sky-rocketing costs. This is not just a problem afflicting renters. In 1988, the average home cost €119,652. In 2018, that figure had risen to €249,472. That’s a 108% increase in cost. But in the same period of time average earnings (and almost 2/3s of people earn below the average) grew from €32,487 to €38,878, a 19% increase in income. (All these figures are adjusted for inflation, to aid direct comparison.)
It does not take a mathematician, an economist, or even a social theologian to tell you that this is a system that unjustifiably favours the wealthy.
No place to lay His head
In the Gospels, we are told that Jesus was a tektōn. We traditionally translate that as carpenter, but it had a broader usage. He was a skilled labourer who would be employed in construction. In the economy of the Roman Empire, the tektōn typically took contract work, travelling commonly, following the building jobs far and wide. In modern terms, Jesus was a member of the precarious working class. Before taking up His ministry, He had no security. He had no rights. His position in society was not in the comfortable middle-class but with the people who live six to a room on short-term contracts, wherever the work can be found.
When He took up His ministry, He forsook even that. The Son of Man had no place to lay His head. We worship a homeless God. We are bound, therefore, to care about those who have no homes, or who are holding on to home by the skin of their teeth, or share their home with many others, sleeping on a rota because there are not enough beds to go around. Our friend’s neighbours should not have to live as they do. When we see them, we should not look away. We are encountering people who look just like Jesus.
New Resource
Since 2016, the Irish Council of Churches and Irish Inter-Church Meeting have been studying the housing and homelessness crisis. What we discovered when we started reading the Bible with the crisis in mind is that the search for home is at the very heart of the narrative of our Scriptures. Our sacred text begins with eviction and ends with a homecoming. To unpack the implications, we decided that along with a letter of pastoral concern, material for a service on the issue, and an election guide, what Irish Christians really needed was small-group study material.
If you take up our housing resource you will learn a lot about Irish society. You will see how we did much better at providing homes when we were not nearly so well off. You will discover that this is an all-island problem, although of course the particular details are different in both jurisdictions. You will realise how in six months a lot can change. But you will also see that the Scriptures speak directly to our predicament.
Irish society is obsessed with property. The Irish church should be obsessed with home - providing it, sustaining it, protecting it. This crisis is our crisis. What is the Gospel but that God is hospitable to us who have no right to expect His welcome? Who is our God but the one who took on flesh and walked among us, going to the margins of society to preach good news to the poor? In this generation, we increasingly realise proclaiming the Good News of grace demands acting for the sake of justice. In Ireland, today, to seek the peace and prosperity of the place in which the Lord has carried us is to seek to provide homes for our neighbours, tangibly and concretely.
These resources were developed in collaboration between many people, including Kevin, who wrote most of the small group study resource. They are available by contacting ICC/IICM for hard copies (info@irishchurches.org) or as a download from www.irishchurches.org/homeless.
Dr Kevin Hargaden leads the Jesuit Centre for Faith and Justice, where he works as a social theologian. He is an elder for the Presbyterian Church in Lucan. His most recent book is entitled Theological Ethics in a Neoliberal Age.
