A Waterford woman has described her experience of being on a social housing list for almost twelve years, as nothing short of ‘hell’.

Katie was offered a home in Mount William on the outskirts of Waterford City earlier this year.

Katie told WLR that being on the list made her feel ‘shameful’ and ‘hopeless’.

“I was a couple of months off twelve years on the list. It was absolute hell. Literally, absolute hell. It’s so downgrading and shameful. You’re getting nowhere. No one is listening to you. They’re sending you from pillar to post and back again. You get no further – with anybody.”

Before accepting an offer that was made to her in May, Katie says she did not even know where the house she accepted was – but she immediately said yes on account of the desperation of her situation.

“I didn’t know where this housing estate was. I didn’t know that this housing estate even existed. All I knew was that it was a three-bedroom house in Mount William. I literally replied straight away when I got the letter to say ‘Yeah, I’m accepting it’. We didn’t see the house. I had no idea what it looked like. We knew nothing about it only that it had three bedrooms.”

With two children aged five and seven months old, Katie said that the transition into finally having a place to call her own has been simply ‘life-changing’. She says that explaining what was going on to her young son was incredibly difficult.

“It’s completely different. It’s like a new life altogether. It’s a completely different life – having your own house. I was in a HAP house for three years. I was told to leave, given a notice and I literally had nowhere to go. My son was three at the time. You have him saying ‘Mammy, why can’t we go home?’. Why are we going to this house and that house? How do you explain that to a three-year-old who wants to know where his bed is gone. Impossible is not the word. Every single day it was where is my bed, my friends, where is my house gone?”.

Having seen her aunt wait almost 12 years for a home of our own, Katie’s niece Caitlin is now in the same situation. The 23-year-old lives in a two-bedroom bungalow with her mother, her 17-year-old sister, and two-year-old son. Caitlin is a full-time carer to her mother, who is partially blind as a result of trigeminal neuralgia.

Caitlin says the application process has been challenging.

“I share a room with my sister. She’s 17. We share a bed, and a wardrobe. My mother lives in the house also, and she’s not well. I’m on the list since May 2018. I don’t believe the situation is being taken into consideration. I’ve been told that my mother and my sister’s illness is nothing to do with me and my child’s application – but I’m living in those circumstances everyday. It’s very hard. My mother is on an awful lot of medication. It’s like I’m looking after her, I’m looking after my sister, and I’m looking after my son.”

Be it searching for social housing, a place to rent, or any accommodation of any sort – Caitlin and her family have been unsuccessful. She says that sometimes it feels as if there is no-one there to help.

“With rented houses, I’ve tried absolutely everything in the last few years. There is just absolutely nothing. I went to the Homeless Office, I’m after being to numerous viewings. I’m getting nothing out of it and it’s hard. There’s a lot of things that people take for granted when they do have a house. It feels like there is no-one there to help you. There’s no two-bedrooms available, then there’s no three bedrooms available. You’re only entitled to a two.”

Recently, a home adjacent to her current house became available on choice based letting and Caitlin applied. She had no luck with her application, and three different people rejected the opportunity to move into the house.

“There’s a house attached to my mothers next door. That’s a two-bedroom bungalow that was on choice-based letting in May of this year. I clicked on it. Three people went to view the house after being offered it by the Council. All three of them refused it. You’d think that you might be next. Everyone on the street wrote up a character reference for me with more than 30 names on the list. They have been great and just want to see me in my forever home.”

Katie believes that the current housing crisis has been detrimental to people’s mental health, particularly those with children.

“It’s affecting people’s mental health. There’s so much pressure on people because they can’t get their own home. People are listening, but it feels like they’re not.”

Metropolitan Mayor of Waterford, Cllr. Seamus Ryan says that stories like these are proof that the housing crisis is not just exclusive to Dublin.

“I’ve been on the Council for quite a long time and I don’t think the housing situation has ever been this bad. Admittedly, over the last year or two, the Council are starting to build more houses, but nowhere near enough to meet the demand of the people of Waterford. We’ve heard for years about the housing crisis in Dublin, but no one is talking about the fact we have a crisis of our own here in Waterford.”

You can listen to the full interview here: