Updated – 8:15pm
HOMELESS RESIDENTS AT a Dublin hotel have been banned from using its front entrance as part of a list of strict rules issued on behalf of Dublin City Council.
Families using the hotel as emergency accommodation are also prohibited from walking through its restaurant or bar after breakfast hours, and must abide by a nightly curfew of 11pm, the Dublin Inquirer reports.
Among the other guidelines issued to families staying in the hotel were instructions banning them from:
Room inspections could be carried out at any time, a document outlining service users’ terms of stay said.
Failure to abide by any of the rules can result in residents being evicted from the premises, families were told.
Risk of eviction
Dublin City Council has increasingly used hotels as a form of emergency accommodation for homeless families.
And Sandra Hand – a Dublin mother-of-two who lived in the hotel in question for several months - told RTÉ’s Liveline programme today that conditions were “like Mountjoy”.
On one occasion, she said she had to present the hotel with proof that she had stayed in Rotunda Hospital overnight.
Her heavily pregnant sister, who is hard of hearing, needed her to assist with interpretation as she went into labour.
Hand said her family would have been evicted from the hotel had she not sought permission to break that night’s curfew.
She and her family have been homeless since January, following the repossession of their rented family home in Finglas.
High rental costs well above their monthly rent allowance meant the family was not in a position to find alternative accommodation, Hand said.
“I didn’t ask to be put into this situation,” she said.
All I wanted was a home for my kids.
According to figures from the Dublin Region Homeless Executive (DRHE), the number of families currently registered as requiring emergency accommodation is 531 – totalling 729 adults and 1,122 dependent children.
In a statement, the DRHE said occupancy rules for private emergency settings have been in place for a number of years.
“The house rules were put in place in order to assist in the overall effective operational management of these settings and having regard to the health and safety of all service users and staff,” a spokesperson said.
The DRHE is reviewing these house rules at present to ensure that these guidelines are appropriate and to ensure that all service users in the vulnerable position of homelessness are treated with dignity and respect.
The DRHE will be liaising with providers of private emergency settings in respect of this over the coming weeks.
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