WHEN SINGLE MOTHER Erica Fleming found herself homeless in 2015 she said it was very difficult.
Erica had been working with the same company for about five years at the time. She had been living with her daughter Emily in private rented accommodation but was unable to afford the rent.
Because she was working, Erica didn’t qualify for any rent supplement from the council, but was unable to find anywhere that she could afford.
“There was just no help there. I went to the council to try to see what options and there was absolutely no options,” she tells TheJournal.ie.
“So at the end of the day we had to register as homeless because we had nowhere to go and we couldn’t afford the rent.
We went into homeless accommodation in July 2015 and we were homeless until April 2017 – a total of 22 months.
Erica and Emily’s story came to public knowledge when they featured on RTÉ Prime Time’s My Homeless Family in January 2016.
Since she became homeless she has been speaking out to highlight the issues that homeless families and mothers with young children face.
Erica eventually managed to secure a home for herself and her daughter earlier this year in north Dublin, but she said that that won’t stop her speaking out and highlighting the ongoing issue of homelessness.
Living with homelessness
The number of child and family homeless has more than quadrupled in three years.
Erica said that homelessness has a particularly negative effect on children, who need security and stability in their lives.
“So at the start when you’re in emergency accommodation that’s very difficult to get your head around,” she says.
“So the impact of that on a child from the get go. The child is already – as far as I’m concerned – she’s going through a traumatic experience.
You don’t where you’re going, you don’t know how long you’re going to be there, so when your child is asking you ‘how long are we going to be here?’, your answer is: ‘I don’t know’.
Erica said that initially when a family becomes homeless, they are booked into hotel accommodation for short periods of time (this gradually extends the longer they stay in homelessness).
She says that Emily found this difficult and would always be worrying about where they were going to stay each night.
“She was obviously always knowing what was going on and how unsure the situation was,” she said.
“So when then… there wasn’t any room and I’d be trying to reassure her and say it’s okay don’t worry.
She’d then be going off to school worrying about that and then you’d pick her up from school at half two and then she’d be saying, ‘did you get anywhere’.
Erica and Emily eventually managed to secure a hotel that she stayed in for most of the time they were homeless. She said that the staff were nice the place they were staying and that they had been lucky in that sense.
However, life in emergency accommodation – and not being able to do what you wanted with your time when you wanted to do it – was very difficult.
“You genuinely have no control. You’ve no control over the amount of time you can spend doing something,” she said.
While Erica always did her best to put on a brave face, she said that it was only after they got their new home, that she realised how tough the whole ordeal had been.
“It’s very upsetting even to think back to it,” she said.
I have to be honest, when we were going through our situation, I think I was on auto-pilot because I was just trying to get through the day. I was just trying to be positive for my child I was just trying to push the negativity away from us.
“I was trying to make it for us that it was me and you against the world, you know?
“I was trying to do all these things not realising my own feelings in the situation or how I felt or how powerless I felt in that situation in that time.
“Because I just wanted to project hope and it’s very easy at certain times when you’re homeless to lose hope.
But you can’t stay numb for 22 months. There is time when it does sink in, there is times when you think: this is our life.
Moving on from homelessness
When Erica and Emily eventually managed to secure their own home, she said that it wasn’t easy adapting to life outside of homelessness at first.
The day that I got my keys [RTÉ's] Ray D’Arcy rang and I was on his show and he said ‘how do you feel’ and I said: ‘To be honest with you I’m thrilled, I am thrilled… but now I have to start processing the emotions’.”
I had to start putting things in place for Emily to feel safe and secure that she can now start opening up about her feelings and talk through how she felt.
Emily has been happy in their new home. Erica says she has had friends over regularly and wants to forget about their experience and move on.
Erica herself, however, feels like she can’t forget her time in homelessness.
Last September, she entered Trinity College Dublin through the Trinity Access Programme (TAP) and spent the year taking a broad range of classes.
In a few weeks she will start an undergraduate degree in English at Trinity and hopes to remain on the frontlines advocating for homeless people’s needs.
“Since we’ve moved into this house I’ve continued doing what I’ve always done when I was in emergency accommodation,” she said.
“That’s not who I am. I’ve always said that I will not stop until every family is out of homeless accommodation.
Once you’ve been through a traumatic experience and a fire is lit it’s very hard for the flame to be extinguished.
Erica said that the problems facing homeless children and families will continue to grow as the crisis worsens.
“I don’t think we’re anywhere near understanding the impact and long term effect this is having on children,” she said.
The longer we as a society accept that families aren’t going to be housed in a proper home… then it’s going to be a forgotten generation.
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