Dublin council workers clean up the scene where another homeless man died overnight in Dublin. pic.twitter.com/N3McX2Z5OK
— Michael Doyle (@MDoyler) January 9, 2015
Cow’s Lane, Temple Bar, Dublin this morning.
More to follow.
Update:
The Homeless Executive has not released the man’s identity but he is believed to have been a Lithuanian in his mid 50s.
The man was found dead at Cow’s Lane in Temple Bar very close to the headquarters of the Homeless Executive in the Civic Offices building.
A passerby noticed the dead man around 7am and the emergency services later pronounced him dead.
He had been working here and living in private accommodation before becoming involved with homeless services in February 2011.
In a statement, the Homeless Executive said that homeless services had made a number of interventions with the man and the Housing First organisation met with him yesterday to assess his health needs and to help with his application for housing.
But it said the man did not present himself for emergency accommodation last night and there were nine empty beds available.
Man found dead in Dublin’s Temple Bar (RTÉ)
very tragic. i visited Dublin before xmas, haven’t been there in years. i was really so shocked by the amount of people begging. really young people too. and so many young people completely smashed off their faces on heroin. it was quite scary to witness. it’s a really very sad state of affairs.
Happened right by my gaff. The Guards on the scene said they didn’t know the cause of death. Between the time the emergency services arrived and he had been cleared, only a couple of hours elapsed.
If it was the regular homeless guy that was there, then he was generally pretty quiet / nice. Quite tragic.
Hurrah for society!
Hurrah for leaping to conclusions before knowing all of the facts! It’s the way of the internet!
A man shouldn’t be sleeping rough in the winter, or any time. If that’s your idea of a successful society, than there is something wrong with you.
Maybe you should offer one of the local heroin junkies your couch for the night so, see how that goes
Oh of course, silly me, you cant possibly be really helping in any other way unless a homeless person is on your couch can you?
Typical moronic attitude of the thick as f**k.
How do you know what she/he wanted? I’m being serious. There are people who cannot, and do not want, to be helped. You ARE jumping to conclusions.
As are you by assuming he didn’t want help.
Seriously, this place is doing my head in with all its begrudgery
There was a bang of Rick-off-the-Young-Ones off your comment, I could practically taste the chapstick.
Stick to funny Mani, it suits you better
Given your increasingly hilariously hysterical posts (Think Helen Lovejoy) on here I’m beginning to think a career in comedy might be more in your line.
RTE comedy, mind. Not the real stuff.
Ah Mani, thats just cold. A stranger on the internet is being mean. How will I survive?
Jeez that is sad. What happened to the plan to have a bed for every homeless person by Christmas? That could be any one of us given an unfortunate twist in circumstances. Don’t imagine that could never happen to you or yours.
I presume these beds are for the dry homeless only though
There was a bed for anyone who wanted it. they actually exceeded their target.
While not knowing anything of this particular person’s circumstances, there are people who don’t want the help that is on offer for their own reasons.
RIP
+1
Many people feel that the new beds don’t offer a safe place for the night due to the way they are set up and staffed.
many people? who do you mean? in my experience, a homeless person’s biggest aversion to availing of shelter is toward other homeless people. it’s not only to do with staffing or set up.
The set up and staffing do matter. If you have a load of camp beds crammed in a hall, and there aren’t enough staff and/or the staff are not sufficiently experienced and qualified, then hostels are less safe. There are more likely to be disturbances in the night, theft, fights etc
There are people who are street homeless, and drug users themselves that don’t avail of hostels like this because they don’t feel safe.
From the pictures I saw in the papers over Christmas, the beds looked like those in a two or three star hotel.
If someone was on the streets over Christmas, it was by choice.
Kieran, did you see the Civil Defence ones on RTE news? Wooden floored halls with rows and rows of camp beds?
As I mentioned before, it is staffing as well as facilities that influence how a hostel is for residents.
as i understand it, this man had a secured a bed for past number of weeks but was admitted to hospital and then discharged himself in the early hours without returning to the shelter. he had a lengthy history of involvement with outreach services. michael’s assumption that he stayed out due to facilities or staffing levels in the shelter is plain wrong in this case.
Excuse me Scottser, I made no assumptions about this man’s case. I am pointing out that the emergency short term accommodation crisis has not been adequately address by the measures put in place last month!
and i put it to you that bringing on stream an extra 260-odd beds has made a significant dent in the number sleeping rough. your assertion that people are refusing beds because of a standards issue may be true in some cases, but you are making it out to be a general factor in why people sleep rough. i don’t believe it to be the case generally, and in the case of this particular tragedy, and in light of the facts, your assertions are wrong.
“Some people sleeping rough do not accept hostel places. A survey undertaken in
1996 found that about 40 per cent of people sleeping rough would not accept a
hostel place because of other residents’ behaviour and feeling unsafe. Among
other reasons were the use of alcohol and drugs by other residents, lack of privacy
and restrictive rules”
https://england.shelter.org.uk/__data/assets/pdf_file/0011/48458/Factsheet_Street_Homelessness_Aug_2006.pdf
Huge percentage, although this is old
thanks for the post don – i’d read that before and i remember being struck by the section related to lads who’d served time in the armed forces:
Major research in 1997 showed that 25 per cent of people sleeping rough on the
streets of London had served in the armed forces.15 Another survey in 2001
showed that only 14 per cent of rough sleepers had served in the armed forces
You need to be careful with the Armed Forces stats though as there is no accurate data and you can be a veteran after a day’s service in the UK so these could be early service leavers (who leave for a variety of reasons not related to service but to pre-existing issues)
I love facts
A death can happen to both the people with homes and those without. What did he die of?
That’s true. May have just been a heart attack but that still doesn’t limit the tragedy.
If anyone I know ever dies from natural causes I hope it’s in their home surrounded by their loved ones. Not alone sleeping on the street in freezing weather
No. I’m afraid people don’t die warm in their beds and with their boots on. Knew a guy, about 32, had a loving family and a warm bed and wasn’t short of cash but hit the smack pretty hard and died on the streets. He didn’t die from homelessness, he died from drugs. The story before christmas of the guy dying on Molesworth St. seemed to just increase the number of beggars around town wrapped in blankets; I think it’s known as a bandwagon. We need to define the homeless before we start providing homes to them.
+1
agree. I work in stephens green and the increase after the guys death was huge. I see someone dying on the streets or someone dying in their home on the same level i’m afraid. they both have died, they both have left behind family to grieve, yes one may have been warmer and may not have been on drugs, and one may have been on drugs and not wanted to or wanted to be on the streets – but i feel the same sadness, someone has lost a child/brother/sister/parent and its sad.
http://www.feantsa.org/spip.php?article120
there ya go hoop. that’s the european typologies outlined. our own definition of homelessness is in the secs 2 and 10 of the 1988 housing act::
http://www.irishstatutebook.ie/1988/en/act/pub/0028/sec0002.html
http://www.irishstatutebook.ie/1988/en/act/pub/0028/sec0010.html
Nice work Scottser.
I have ample amounts of concern but there are some people begging on the streets of Dublin that definitely could “provide accommodation from his [their] own resources.”
when i started working in the shelters about 10 years ago, there was one lad who would tap thurs-sun around aungier st. he’d easily pull in 250 per night. not only that but the casino at no 78 used to pay him to keep other tappers away. he’s the reason i’d never give money to a tapper.
Not far from central bank which says it all.
Don’t start.
Wonder who Sinn Fein will blame?