Thomas Ryan has never slept beneath the cloister of Clonmel’s old courthouse nor shivered on its centuries-old paving stones, but he sees little difference between himself and the rough sleepers who sometimes congregate there. «They’re visible, I’m hidden, but we’re all homeless,» he says. Some people take issue with him saying that.
«They say, but you’re not really homeless.«But I don’t have a home. I’m nearly two years sofa-surfing. I go between my sister’s place and my brother’s. But they have their families and those are their homes, not mine.
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«I know I’m lucky. Only for them, I’d be on the streets or gone down to the river.»
Twice in recent times he has gone «down to the river» — the last trip taken by too many people in the Co Tipperary town — but twice thoughts of family pulled him back from the brink.
«I’ve been to the darkest place since becoming homeless,» he says.
Mr Ryan (36) was working a low-wage job and sharing private rented accommodation with a friend until his friend emigrated in 2016.
Unable to keep up the rent himself and struggling to find an alternative, his mother urged him to return to the council house that had been the family home for 33 years.
His stepdad had died two years before and he was happy to keep his mother company but he didn’t intend to stay long term. He was only there a short time when his mother was diagnosed with cancer. He abandoned plans to move out and was there when she died in November 2017. And then his troubles really began.
«I wasn’t on the tenancy agreement. I went down to the council to explain the change in circumstances and they said, thanks very much, we want the house back,» he said.
«I had until January to move but I asked for an extension to March. People say I should have fought harder to keep the house but I was grieving.
«And I didn’t need three bedrooms. It’s a family house. But I didn’t realise when I handed over the key that I’d be put to the bottom of the housing list.»
There are 588 single people on the list in the county, along with 678 larger households, of which 572 include children.
Mr Ryan is eligible for the Housing Assistance Payment but, at €360 a month, he says even if he could find a place and a landlord to accept him, he couldn’t afford to top it up to pay the rent.
He left his job at a call centre last September because of his health. They have sayings in the industry: ‘smile before you dial’ and ‘customers hear the smile in your voice’. «I didn’t have any smiles,» he says. Next week he begins a training course in special needs two days a week and he keeps busy volunteering with local hospital radio and the Involvement Centre, where he has supported others through mental health crises for many years and now finds it a lifeline for himself.
«I’m doing everything I can to make my life better,» he says. «But I don’t want to be a 50-year-old man sofa-surfing.»
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