Not so long ago, I found myself on the radio discussing the policy whereby local authorities take people off the housing list for 12 months after they refuse housing under the choice-based letting scheme.
Similar policies exist whereby women are told they have three chances to accept housing and if they don’t accept those, they can be removed from the housing list.
In Ireland today if the local authority thinks you have refused more than one offer in any 12-month period you can face suspension from that list.
This policy forces women into taking housing that does not meet their needs out of fear.
And by whose experiences and standards does the local authority deem what is ‘reasonable’?
Policies like these are harmful to women.
This week the same topic came up again on my Twitter timeline in a discussion on housing, with one contributor giving out about people refusing a house because they want to stay close to ‘mammy’.
One-parent households, which are primarily female-led, are most at risk of poverty, with more than three in every 10 living below the poverty line.
On average women earn less than men, they are more likely to be in precarious work, and they are more likely to be reliant on close family and community ties.
It is important we challenge the myth that there is some inherent entitlement of women that want to stay close to home and discuss why it is an anti-poverty measure to facilitate one-parent families being as close as possible to the supports they require to live.
What must be challenged is the stereotyping, stigmatising, and shaming of women for wanting housing close to home.
There are very real, and important reasons why housing in a community you know and in which you have supports matters.
The state should do as much as possible to accommodate this, and women mustn’t be punished for holding out for a place that is safer and closer to the networks they rely on.
Housing cannot be uncoupled from a myriad of other things that must be considered when developing housing policy.
It is fair to say that many people, family types, social classes would ‘like’ to live closer to family, friends, and so on, but that is not the same as a ‘need’ to live close to family, friends, and the community from which you came.
When you grow up in such a tight-knit community, it can be hard to survive and thrive outside of it. You can become disorientated; you feel displaced and isolated.
Lynn Ruane started out life as a mother needing support from the state but what helped her more than anything the state could provide was the support of her family. Picture: Brian McEvoy
To grow up in an urban working-class environment is an experience that grounds you in a particular space; your identity and sense of belonging are anchored to those you grew up with.
You never left that community for schools, for shopping or friendships, or love. The community is you, and you are the community.
Your sense of self is the world around you, so when you have children, this becomes their world too.
It is not easy to leave, and many don’t want to, but even more, they can’t.
Everyone they love is there, and everyone who helps is beside you. It is your only capital, and it’s crucial to you and your children’s survival.
I started my life out as a mother needing support from the state.
I required this support on and off for many years, but what helped more than anything that the state could provide was the support of my family.
I had many jobs over the years, cleaning, packing shelves at night in Dunnes Stores, answering the phone lines for British Bakeries, and then studying and working in addiction.
Slowly, while raising my girls, I was working towards being financially independent; it was hard, but it would have been impossible had I not been able to stay with the support system of my community.
Many women today are shamed for seeking housing close to the support they need to live.
Nobody I know feels entitled to a home at the place of their choosing; what they feel is a need and a desire to remain with who they know, who they can lean on and who will help them when they are struggling.
It’s not about having a babysitter so you can go on a date, or go to the cinema with friends, it’s about life and survival.
For many, it’s about helping with the school run, and it’s about watching a child while you work in the local Centra; it’s about collecting the kids from creche while you attend the local community college.
We are each other’s greatest assets, and that is what women want for themselves and their children; the sense of belonging that they had.
Reducing child poverty relies on a greater, more nuanced understanding of housing. Social capital is part of that nuance.
There is a deep trust inherent amongst families in working-class communities. We rely on various types of relationships to alleviate the level of poverty we are exposed to.
The conversation needs nuance because simplification like the narrative that women are being “picky” about what housing they accept does not favour the social cohesion of communities.
To truly understand space and place, we must listen very deeply to what people with housing needs say.
When people say “I need to stay in or near my community”, you can translate this to the idea of social capital.
Therefore, when a woman vulnerable to low pay, low education, poverty, or violence seeks to stay within her community, she instinctively is doing so for safety and better outcomes. Which, in turn, benefits the state.
We know that lone parents statically have the highest levels of deprivation, and insisting on housing them on the other side of the county compounds that deprivation.
When your support networks themselves do not possess other types of social capital such as finances, technology, or educational capital, then you mobilise around each other in different ways:
- Babysitting while you work;
- Minding your sick child while you go to the chemist;
- Picking up milk for you in the shop when your kids are sleeping in bed;
- Sharing uniforms and schools books;
- Buying the birthday cake for your child that you can’t afford.
The list is endless in how communities support one another.
I spent many years pursuing education to help articulate our experiences, mainly because I felt the stigmatisation, and I knew how the stigma reinforced the inequality we experience.
To begin conceptualising the intersections between social capital, housing, and community cohesion would require much more than what I am presenting here.
The gain to women, families, and the state to support women with their housing needs is immeasurable; it is not easy to show on a graph; it’s almost invisible, but to those that depend on it is very real and heavily felt when it is taken away.
- Lynn Ruane has served as an independent senator for the University of Dublin constituency in Seanad Éireann since April 2016
Source: https://www.irishexaminer.com/opinion/commentanalysis/arid-40782831.html
