You may recall a post from two weeks ago about a story by Irish Times journalist Kitty Holland in relation to Sabrina McMahon and her three children who spent a week living in her car in Tallaght. Ms McMahon said she couldn’t find any landlord in Dublin who would accept rent allowance.

Ms McMahon later told Niall Boylan on 4FM that she and her children moved from Athy in Co. Kildare to Dublin two years ago after their council house in Athy was broken into and vandalised.

Approximately two weeks before that story broke, Independent TD Catherine Murphy told the Dáil she knew “a litany” of families who have found themselves homeless.

Further to this, this morning Kitty Holland, in the Irish Times, reports:

The Dublin Region Homeless Executive expects to spend €4.5 million on emergency hotel accommodation for homeless families this year, The Irish Times has learned. This compares with €1.3 million spent last year and represents a 10-fold increase on the €455,000 it spent on hotels for homeless families in 2012. The executive, which oversees homeless services across the capital’s four local authorities, is now using more than 20 hotels and hostels as the number of families with children presenting for emergency accommodation continues to increase.

In a related story, Ms Holland reports that Estelle Sweeney, 31, and her three sons – aged 11, nine and six – recently slept in her car after they became homeless. They are now in a hostel.

Ms Holland reports:

The family became homeless at the end of March when the landlady took back possession of the house she had been renting in Swords. She was given 28 days’ notice to quit, she says. She called more than 30 rental agencies, but couldn’t find any that took rent allowance. Fingal council advised her to come back when she was actually homeless, she says, and then advised her to call the Dublin city homeless freephone number.“They told me they had no emergency accommodation.” She went back to Fingal, she says, and they told her there was still nothing they could do. She says she and her children spent eight nights in her car, sleeping at the back of Dublin airport.

Previously: Children On Board

“A Litany of People In The Same Position”

Dublin hotel bill for homeless families to hit €4.5m (Irish Times)

‘I tried to make it like an adventure for the kids’ (Irish Times)