Tom Cahill talks with Jean Quinn, founder of the Sophia Housing Association which takes a holistic approach to helping homeless people.
It all started when Jean Quinn saw homeless people lying in the streets of Dublin. Jean, a member of a religious congregation called Daughters of Wisdom, had been in the nursing profession for 15 years. But in 1984, while studying theology at Milltown Park, she came in contact with some of Dublin’s homeless. Horrified to see people lying in the streets, she said: “That’s it! That’s what I want to get involved with.” And get involved she did, first in the Focus Ireland organisation for a number of years.
However, she had a dream about making a difference to the lives of homeless and vulnerable people through what she describes as “a more holistic approach to working with those on the margins”. Over the years she had worked with many families and people out of home. What struck her particularly about them was that after about eight weeks of being settled the thing that made them homeless in the first place began to assert itself again.
“That’s the emotional thing,” she explains. “Often related to alcohol or drug dependency, it forced them out on to the streets again. So, apart from basic needs like food, shelter and clothing they also needed the support of therapy to deal with their emotional problems.” Surprisingly, once those problems were being addressed they began to look at what Jean calls ‘the God dimension’ in their lives.
Her dream persisted. She went to her congregation with that dream, thinking that her proposal to form the Sophia Housing Association would be rejected because of the cost involved. But to her delight her congregation agreed to support it. Then, in 1998, joined by Eamonn Martin who had worked in Focus Ireland she formed the Sophia Housing Association. The first step was to set up a limited company with charitable status, which she did following 18 months of research and planning. The Revenue Commissioners granted approved status to Sophia Housing as a Housing Body. It is now affiliated to the Irish Council for Social Housing and the Disability Federation of Ireland.
As what she was doing became more widely known, other congregations pledged support. To date, with the assistance of seven congregations for female religious, one male religious order and several lay-people, the housing association has projects in Cork, Dublin, the Midlands and the West of Ireland. Not only was her dream becoming known to members of religious congregations but also to local authorities, voluntary organisations, doctors and social workers who began to refer people to Sophia Housing. Homelessness, as viewed by Sophia Housing, is not just a matter of not having anywhere to live. It is “an extreme form of social exclusion which can involve exclusion from normal rights of citizenship: housing rights, political rights, rights to actively participate in the community and social rights to fully benefit from welfare systems”.
Besides providing suitable and accessible housing for vulnerable people, Sophia Housing supports residents to pursue educational and professional goals that can lead to employment, economic independence and more opportunities for their children. Their projects aim to foster nurturing environments where people feel safe, children thrive and adults discover special gifts and talents that can support them in the future.
To date two such projects have commenced, both in Cork: one at O’Sullivan’s Quay and the other in South Douglas Road. These two projects combined consist of 14 apartments. There is close collaboration between the Good Shepherd services and Sophia Housing in running these projects. Jean explains that they buy some houses through local authorities and others they build. The Department of the Environment assists with capital funding but the rest they have to come up with themselves.
Building work has also commenced on two more projects: one in Cork Street, Dublin; the other in Donabate, Co Dublin. The Sisters of Mercy donated a large property to the Sophia Housing Association in Cork Street, Dublin. With full planning permission for social housing development there, they intend to build 50 units of accommodation consisting of 1, 2 and 3 bedroom apartments, a restaurant to function as a dinner centre and to provide for a “Meals on Wheels” programme, a laundry, a Wisdom Centre and a creche. These 50 units will house people who are homeless, marginalised and vulnerable. Some of the units will be specifically designed for wheelchair users. Sophia Housing will give primary consideration to people from the local area who have a housing need and who need supported housing. Some of the units will be for short-term tenancy only, both for families and single people. Admission to these units will be decided in consultation with the Local Authority.
Sophia Housing’s transitional programme has three aims. First, to provide residents with safe, secure accommodation so they can experience what it is like to live in a house or apartment on their own. Second, to provide them with the time, space and support necessary for them to move on to new accommodation in local communities. And, third, to provide residents with reflective time, individual and group work sessions, which is considered an essential element of support.
Their Donabate project is at the behest of a Local Authority. In collaboration with Fingal County Council, they have developed plans for building and operating a transitional housing programme for 20 families. They will run the project for Fingal County Council. This project will consist of 20 1-3 bedroom apartments. The Presentation Sisters gave Sophia Housing a property in Portlaoise, but objections to the project have delayed the implementation of the plans. However; all projects built by Sophia Housing will have a project leader and project workers to support new families and single persons moving into their new and fully-furnished apartments or houses.
These new residents would be moving from temporary or emergency accommodation. Not surprisingly, many need counselling, and assistance in getting used to a regular daily routine: for example, getting up in the morning and having the children ready for school. And someone is always on reception to welcome people to the projects.
All projects built by Sophia Housing will have a Wisdom Centre. This will be a place set apart. “People have said,” Jean recounts, “that they would just love to get away to a place that would be quiet.” So, this quiet space will be provided for residents to get away from it all, to talk, to have a ritual, to avail of art or music therapy or even to enjoy some adult education classes. The Wisdom Centres will consist of glass-covered areas leading to a central water-and-wind garden. Entrance to and exit from the garden is only through these smaller quiet spaces. “It’s to offer people experiences that we take for granted,” Jean adds.
Sophia Housing has both pre-residency and post-residency programmes of assistance for tenants. They also organise group work on practical skills such as cooking, budgeting, availing of local amenities and approaching psychiatric and public health nursing services. The people referred to them may very well be lacking in budgeting skills, evident in rent arrears, for example. They may have problems with addiction, experience relationship difficulties, isolation and have low self-esteem. The aim of the group activities is to develop skills and build confidence, which may have been lost by the people in question while they were living out of home. This is an example of the holistic approach that Jean dreams of.
Groups like Sophia Housing and Focus Ireland have their hands full. In one rural area, which she didn’t identify, Jean says that homelessness has quadrupled within the past two years. There is a significant lack of suitable low-cost private and rented accommodation in Ireland. According to Sophia Housing asylum seekers regularly experience racism from landlords within the private rented sector. Usually single persons are not accommodated on the Local Authority housing list. Living in emergency hostels can be very difficult and there is a lack of supportive accommodation to meet short-term, transitional and long-term needs.
Other challenges that groups like the Sophia Housing Association must face are the effects of specific health care issues especially among children living in hostels, the difficulty in accessing mental health services for persons who are homeless and the effects of the new housing legislation regarding antisocial behaviour amongst tenants. The latter is expected to result in the emergence of a new chronically homeless group, according to Sophia Housing. Perhaps, in the face of such issues a dream may be more effective than cold commercial calculation.
This article first appeared in The Word (October, 2002), a Divine Word Missionary publication.
