After the bursting of the housing bubble and mortgage crisis, the periphery of the Irish capital is full of newly built houses and abandoned. And architects homeless forced to turn to the soup kitchen. Paradoxes of neoliberalism to collapse in a European country to bankruptcy risk. Travel between the "middle class homelessness'
" I am 8 months who are without accommodation. I was the architect in a studio here in Dublin. And I lived with my girlfriend in Ranelagh. Unfortunately, when this crisis began in the construction industry I've been fired along with several colleagues. It has since ended the relationship with my girlfriend. The rent was too high to pay for it alone. I started to feel short of money. I had to leave the house. That's how I became homeless. "
Tom O 'Kelly is 32 years old and wearing a gray tweed jacket, well made and fairly well maintained if not for the edges frayed. It is not difficult to imagine him clean-shaven and with his shirt clean and ironed, in the morning while waiting for the tram to go to the office, as he did every day during the years of the housing boom. How did so many other homeless middle class (middle class homeless) who are trying to survive on the streets of Dublin. In a country where in good years was known as the "Celtic tiger" for its rampant growth, after the toxic mortgage crisis, found himself imprisoned in the cage of the IMF and European Central Bank in which Ireland has a loan of 85 billion euro. And interests.
the canteen of Brother Kevin
Tom met him in line to take the free ticket to be delivered to the cooks of the Capuchin Day Centre, the largest soup kitchen in Dublin, managed by the old Capuchin friar Kevin Crowley. Every day here is an average of a thousand meals served to those who have money to eat: a more than twofold compared to the years before the crisis when it served a maximum of four. Similar increases were also there for breakfast, and bags of supplies that the center distributes a weekly basis.
is the third time in recent years I am going to visit the canteen frate Kevin. E ogni volta che vengo il salone sembra essere sempre più gremito e la coda fuori più lunga, anche se per fortuna dall'altro lato ci sembrano anche essere sempre più cuoche in azione e cibo a sufficienza. «Da quando vengo qui il numero di persone è aumentato considerevolmente», conferma Simona, una ragazza siciliana che lavora come maestra di tango e fa la volontaria al Capuchin Centre. Testimonianze che sembrano contraddire la Homeless People Unit, ente per l'assistenza ai poveri della città di Dublino, secondo cui il numero di senzatetto sarebbe invariato rispetto ai censimenti fatti prima della crisi.
Frate Kevin, che ha aperto il centro alla fine degli anni '60, invece non ha dubbi. «Nella mia vita I had never seen a longer period of this black, with more anguish and despair on the streets of Dublin. With more people who need help and with so many wealthy people have fallen into disgrace. " And if you ask Brother Kevin Who are the people who sit at his table, he replied: "We do not question the people who come here because we think it's hard enough to the situation where they are. But sometimes people tell us their stories and what you can see that this crisis has not spared anyone. " I mean not only the "usual suspects" as the unemployed and low-skilled workers, or people with drug problems, alcoholism and mental illness, but also "architects, ingegneri, avvocati». «Noi li chiamiamo i nuovi poveri».
Classe media allo sbando
La crisi dei mutui spazzatura non è la prima crisi ne sarà l'ultima che si abbatte sulle coste dell'Irlanda. I più anziani ricordano ancora con amarezza quella «terribile» degli anni '80, quando tanti irlandesi si trovarono costretti a emigrare a frotte. Come ai vecchi tempi. La differenza è che se in quel caso a essere colpiti furono soprattutto operai e minatori, vittime della de-industrializzazione, questa crisi è arrivata dappertutto, colpendo pesantemente la classe media di impiegati e liberi professionisti. Neppure gli «eroi economici» degli anni del boom immobiliare, gli architetti and engineers involved in infrastructure projects and residential and even a few years, the urban landscape littered with cranes were saved from the meat grinder.
The construction industry is out of the crisis almost halved, with tens of thousands of unemployed construction workers ended up in that have exceeded 400,000. Among the ranks of designers, architects and engineers, even a third is over fired between 2008 and 2009. The job loss has taken many of these professionals (especially the younger ones) without savings and with the weight of loans taken out during the peak of the housing bubble, with rates that have suddenly become unbearable even for highly skilled workers so now there was no prospect of finding work. Some people managed to save themselves by relying on relatives and friends or emigrating abroad as 200,000 Irish people have made since the crisis began. But many, especially those that are left without social networks to cling to, have found themselves suddenly poor. Sometimes without a place to sleep, protected from rain and cold.
Sitting at a table of the Capuchin Day Centre'm Nick, a man of 35 with brown hair a little 'white-washed. A native of Cork, worked as a civil engineer, working on site management for a construction company in Dublin. "I had miscalculated with the money I had and the cost of living. When I lost my job I realized that I could not pay the mortgage payments and I started to where they would live in abandoned houses. Sometimes even on the street. Hostels for the poor I do not like, "he says clutching a fork with which he brings to his mouth roast beef and mashed potatoes. Then I said with pique a good engineer as one gets by in life on the street. "We need to put several layers of cardboard under the sleeping bag to sleep well. Because otherwise it gets the cold pavement. And you have to look for a place where there is no wind, and where people do not go for a pee. After a bit 'you get used to that. "
"We hear many stories of people who first was good and now I do not know how to cope and how to pay mortgage payments, "says brother Kevin. According to the latest figures 45,000 Irish families are in arrears for 3 months on mortgage payments, for a total value of € 8.5 billion of "toxic mortgages." These are often people who were relatively well before the crisis, but have not put aside the 'penny for the rainy day "as recommended a popular proverb. And now they have to cope with the threat of mass evictions. Especially if as feared in the coming months in many Irish banks that have until now limited to the eviction action against the family in arrears, they decide to go and take the houses that no longer has a third of the value they had before the crisis. To try to sell them and can recover.
The house: from dream to nightmare
The 'architects homeless "who meet at the table of his father Kevin are proof that the dream of neo-liberalism of brick made in Ireland has turned into a nightmare. A nightmare that has the background image of the long rows of newly built homes and given up on the outskirts of Dublin, Cork, Galway and other cities. And in the foreground, the image of a hanged man in the cabin of his garden. "A colleague of mine had gone to visit a gentleman who was in arrears on mortgage payments. His wife said he was not there and come back in two hours, "says Andrew, a boy who works in a bank building in Dublin. Before the crisis, signed mortgages. It has now been moved along with several colleagues at the department debt. "When my colleague returned she found him dead. Over the next few months, my bank will ask me to be more aggressive with people who are in arrears on payments. And I do not know if I am capable. "
The house as a formidable source of speculation has turned into a damnation of loans for banks to go-go, and an unattainable goal for many people, like those that line up every day at the table of his father Kevin. "What I want is to have a house and no longer need the drug. I'm not asking much, "says Stuart, smiling, 42, American home, with 3 years in the army. Now sleeping in a hostel for the poor of the town of Dublin. Working up to a year ago was a lawyer and was married to an Irish woman with whom he lived in a spacious house in North Dublin. After drinking problems and the separation with his wife, he found himself without savings. He had problems getting the dole and housing, "because you have to have the benefit reside somewhere" and found himself with as many other professionals, time estimates and well-paid, where to sleep happen and to eat the soup kitchen.
"I strongly hope that this will improve - Brother Kevin said - but to see what's going on I fear that in the coming months may increase people still need help. It may become difficult to feed all those in need. " The Capuchin Day Centre spends € 1.3 million, of which 430,000 are covered by the state and the rest of bids. The fear is that the new government of Fine Gael and Labour coalition that won elections in late February to cut those funds already threatened to do so as the previous Liberal government of Fianna Fail. "We love the new government, hoping that we will continue to help," sighed Brother Kevin with a vein of bitterness before returning to supervise the traffic of dishes and kitchen utensils dell'indaffaratissima.
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