Photos, emails, playlists: our phones and computers have become hosts for our pasts. What happens when the backups fail?
Sarah Hagi, Marlowe Granados, Sloane Crosley and Sam WolfsonTue 28 Mar 2023 06.00 BST
No matter how much our computers assure us they’re backing everything up to a hard drive in the sky, memory failure remains a hardwired part of our lives. Writers reflect on when a digital loss created an emotional hole – from the college essay that disappeared minutes before the due date to an iPhone update that lost years of photographs.
Sarah Hagi: ‘I was the only historian of our short-lived universe and now it was lost for ever’
As with most millennials, my first email address was an embarrassing early gesture at signifying what was important, which to an 11-year-old me was the name of my pet hamster. That Hotmail address was primarily used to access Neopets and talk to friends on MSN Messenger.
It was through MSN that, at the age of 13, I met my first true friend.
I wasn’t without friends growing up, but my friendship with K was the first time I had felt a kinship deeper than anything I had experienced outside of my siblings. She was a schoolmate of a friend who had recently transferred from private school. K and I became fast friends. We talked constantly, we exchanged hundreds if not thousands of emails and we created our own world nobody else understood. In some of my first forms of public self expression, we created web pages that we found edgy and that our classmates found somewhat upsetting.
K was not healthy. Her life revolved around her illnesses that were a result of a rare form of cancer she had as an infant. Her mobility was limited and she was on more medication than I have seen to this day, something she dealt with through a sense of humour darker and more powerful than that of anyone I knew at school. I owe so much of my sense of self to her. It was through being friends with K that I began understanding the ways people adapt to life’s harsh circumstances, something that became clear when she got a heart transplant at the age of 13.
When K died, in our first year of university, I was alone in my mourning. At that point in our lives, she was extremely popular. We would email each other frequently about how nobody knew us the way we knew each other. I dealt with her death by turning inwards, never talking about it to anyone and being alone with a sadness I didn’t have the words to express. Years later, when I felt ready to revisit our shared past, I realized I couldn’t access my old Hotmail account where we shared our deepest pre-teen feelings.
I was distraught and consumed by guilt. I was the only historian of our short-lived universe and now it was lost for ever. But after experiencing a second type of mourning, I came to the understanding that it didn’t truly matter that these emails couldn’t be accessed.
I could have spent the last 15 years revisiting and rediscovering our shared past, believing that was the most important link I have to that period of my life. But I’ve never been one to tie too much meaning to any object either tangible or digital. I purge my apartment with very little thought to what I’m throwing out, much to the horror of many people I know. What remains of K’s digital footprint barely matters any more, because it never really did. I’m still innately drawn to anyone who reminds me of her and I still feel her influence on me even as I age. With or without those emails, my love for my friend has not been lost, even as specific details continue to fade.
Marlowe Granados: ‘My early 20s are trapped somewhere in the memory prison of an iPhone 4’
Up until I was about 20, I had been pursuing becoming a real photographer. My father gave me a camera when I was a child, and I stuck to using 35mm film throughout my teens. I would plaster my room with photos of my friends participating in underage debauchery, much to the chagrin of my mother (whose eyes narrowed whenever she glanced at the walls). I dabbled in showing prints at group shows and putting together photobooks, but over time photo developing shops became scarce, and the cost to continue was becoming exorbitant. Out of financial necessity and youthful indecision, my interests shifted; I dropped photography, moved on to writing and started exclusively taking photos on my iPhone.
I got my first iPhone in my first year at university in London, at around the same time as my best friends. It suddenly gave us access to a new era of documentation. We could get on to Instagram (which we’d heard so much about) and post photos directly to our Facebook feeds.
I lived in London for six years – some of the time in university and some of the time working several low-paying jobs at once. Halfway through my time, I was pickpocketed outside a club in Dalston. They took my phone and nothing else. The moment I realized it was gone, I knew that the faithful documentation of my life had disappeared. I did not believe in the virtues of backing up, or the cloud, or even plugging my phone into a laptop. I took the position that software updates were so Apple could slowly make your phone’s model obsolete (this was not entirely conspiratorial). Years of my time in London were suddenly erased.
I took a few days to grieve the loss and got upgraded to a new phone. By the weekend, as I was working my shift as a hostess at a hotel restaurant, someone lifted my new phone from the host stand, and, according to the “find my iPhone” tool, made their way to Whitechapel. I took it as a fateful sign that maybe this technology just wasn’t meant for me, a person who should not have anything of value on her person as it is vulnerable to being misplaced or stolen. At that moment I was out some money from the loss and trying to scrape together more to buy a third, lower-end model. This was a problem I could finagle my way out of. It never occurred to me that there might be a long-term consequence.
We underestimate how much our memory is couched and filled in by photographs. So much of my teenage years I can remember perfectly, with visual aid from physical photographs. As a writer, when I am in the process of taking inspiration from a memory, I often revisit photos of that era. A chronicle of outfits, scenery, or food can summon a specific atmosphere that might be fuzzy due to time or too many cocktails. As I look back on my 20s, there is a peculiar gap. I can hardly pinpoint a specific event from age 22 to 24, as though the years marbled and slipped out of mind. I’m certain that things happened to me. I’m the kind of person things happen to! But there was no distinct, crystalline structure for those memories because all this time I had been depending on photographs to furnish them. Those years of mine were trapped somewhere in east London, in the memory prison of an iPhone 4.
“When people rely on technology to remember something for them, they’re essentially outsourcing their memory,” Linda Henkel, a psychology professor at Fairfield University, explained on NPR. “They know their camera is capturing that moment for them, so they don’t pay full attention to it in a way that might help them remember.”
This isn’t the first claim that technological advances might decimate our memory. In Plato’s The Phaedrus, Socrates complains that the written word will ruin our ability to remember. Relying only on what was left on paper will leave us to become “tiresome company” when not exercising our actual memories.
I agree that we are a new kind of tiresome, but how much of that is our fault? In this age of information, I wonder what our capacity for stimulation might be. As someone who was a photographer and now a writer, I don’t know whether I have ever been able to keep a memory perfect, without shaving it down or shedding a few details along the way. The loss of those years to the digital sands of time is regrettable, but I have some faith that away from screens, the fog may lift.
Sloane Crosley: ‘I experienced abject panic at the loss of thousands of words and months of work’
You really haven’t lived until you’ve been on hold with a customer service representative long enough to take a shower. In 2009, I lost the first three chapters of a novel when my computer crashed. The immediate result of this was denial (surely, if I just pressed the right keys in the right order … ) followed by abject panic at the loss of thousands of words and months of work, followed by an epic call with someone from the computer company.
But was the book any good? I am the least qualified to say. And yet the only one who will ever be qualified to say. I know it was – or was meant to be – a post-apocalyptic comedy in which a mysterious woman shows up on the doorstep of a man who’s been living alone in an abandoned mansion. She falls in love with him but he refuses to sleep with her, even though she may be the last woman on Earth. It doesn’t sound so terrible, as I type it now, but everything is in the execution. And one of the first requirements for great literature is that it exist.
Over the course of four painful hours, during which only one of us was getting paid, a patient woman coached me through the resuscitation of my files while I bit my nails.
I took a shower during a planned absence, while she consulted a more tech-savvy colleague, keeping my phone perched on the far corner of the bathroom sink in case her voice broke through the hold music. I suppose things could have been worse. We could have been on the phone long enough for her to go home and take a shower.
When she got back on the line, I felt as if hope was in sight, my novel nearly brought back to life. She said, blasé as can be, “OK, now just copy your hard drive on to the disc.” I laughed and said “what disc?” My laptop didn’t have a disc drive. She’d presumed a different model. Then, as if this barely animated piece of hardware could hear the tone of my response, it crashed again. This time for good.
There were pieces of the novel on notepads and in Word documents I’d emailed to myself. My remedial version of “backing up”. But the story never congealed again in quite the same way. Not that I put a Herculean effort into it. I don’t suspect those chapters were headed somewhere spectacular.
The good news is that humor writing – or writing that is humorous, which is a different animal – is steeped in observation. Which means that some of that lost novel has appeared again over the years, in different guises, as I have moved through the world with my eyes open. There are several phrases or images from it, little cameos, in my new novel, Cult Classic. These are moments that seemed eerily familiar when I wrote them. It’s a gratifying feeling, akin to remembering one’s dream late in the day, even several days later. Which is itself a feeling akin to finding money in your pocket. It’s your money. Not more money. Not someone else’s money. But how exciting to finally have it back, to spend it any way you choose.
Sam Wolfson: ‘I opened up Apple Music and it was all gone’
I am exactly the kind of man who agonises over playlists. As a teenager, I read Nick Hornby’s High Fidelity, about a man who prioritises the order of a mixtape over tending to his relationships, and failed to understand that the character was supposed to be obsessive and pathetic. I thought I was embodying Rob’s cool, controlling vibe when, as a teenager, I would spend hours planning the music for a party, consider the guestlist and the mix of tastes, and then smoulder with nerd rage when someone would yank the aux cord to play some psytrance.
In adulthood, the playlists I made started to be less about other people and more about me – I would add to them painstakingly over many years. I found the perfect songs that could gently transport me from the frantic final emails of Friday afternoon to the first sip of alcohol on Friday evening, an emergency running playlist of non-stop nipple chafers for when my regular running playlist wasn’t motivating enough.
In the mix were songs that had changed my life. The ones that soundtracked blissful spring nights in the pandemic, when dancing round the kitchen was a full evening’s entertainment. Songs that filled up the newly acquired space after a miserable break-up when I had to get used to being alone more. I even had one playlist, “Songs to wake me from a coma”, of music that carries such great psychic weight (Lil Star by Kelis, Point of View by DB Boulevard, The Rat by The Walkmen) that I thought it might come in handy should I experience brain trauma.
Then, at the end of 2021, I moved from London to New York and everyone I met would say the same thing: “Can you Venmo me for that”, “I’ll pay the bill and just get me on Venmo”, “Just pay your rent on Venmo”. It turned out the country that houses Silicon Valley can’t work out how to do instant bank transfers. But to download Venmo, I had to change locations on the Apple App Store – no big deal. I clicked through all the warnings and terms and conditions without reading them and moved to a US account. Then I opened up Apple Music, and it was all gone.
It might not seem that big a deal, losing playlists. After all, the music is all still in the cloud. But despite many attempts I simply can’t remember all, or even most, of the songs that I had. It’s a strange kind of loss, these little pieces of autobiography, a decade in the making, lost to a glitch in the system.
I’ve tried to start again, finding homes for Fireboy DML next to Fontella Bass, Unknown T snuggled with Gerry Rafferty. But there’s no sense of history. My old playlists were refined and redrafted. Now they feel perfunctory, a contact sheet rather than a photo album.
The only upside is now, rarely, when I’m at a party or listening to the radio, I’ll hear one of the lost songs. It feels like the hand of heaven, a little part of myself that I can slot back into place. Which I suppose is quite a nice way to feel about overhearing 2007’s minor Groove Armada single Song 4 Mutya.
Dé Céadaoin Deireadh Fómhair 18, 2006 23:31
by Michelle Clarke – Social Justice and Ethics
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I am really surprised no-one, not even the Irish Property Owners Organisation or the Property Residential Board i.e. the Tribunals or Social Services, or Threshold and housing ageencies have replied.
These people are human beings who have worked many years and contributed to our tax system. Rather than apply for social housing back in the 1930’s and 40’s, 50’s, they chose another route. It was covered by the the Pre 1963 legislation which allowed owners of large houses to become private landlords charging rents and being allowed to divide their homes into the maximum tenancies.
Just think of the areas – Rathmines, Ranelagh, Wellington Road, Elgin Road, Waterloo Road, this policy was replicated throughout Ireland and Dublin. Who owns some of these near derelict properties with people living in some cases with no electricity?
A lot of people came up from the country and worked in our Civil Service, Banks, schools etc.
Surely, they have a right of tenancy if they have lived in a property for over 40 years? Do these people deserve to be harassed by a system that is governed by greed, posposity, lacking in compassion. Where is the proection? Where is the law? Do people realise that now Governent say they endorse social housing as distinct from prior policies – we now have no real stock of corporation houses to sell off to owners who wish to buy them.
The IPOA report that Private owners feels hard done by given the Government policies in providing housing for Govt. tenants and that the rate of return on renting out a house can be a low as 3.5%.
Doesn’t sound too much to me for the responsibility involved in being a landlord, if we ever hit negative equity……..
Some integration is needed. Where a person is to be ejected by the Sheriff for having lived in her flat for nearly 30 years, the Health Services, the Legal Services, Threshold or the Like, etc ought to negotiate their rights under the 1980 Law, Section 17, rather than smother them from the facts in a bloated bureaucracy that ensures a path to homelessness.
Michelle (Really concerned about what is happening to certain vulnerable people)
Michelle
I note yoou have taken account from the tenants’ position. Albeit, a person may have a tenancy for 30 years, obligations exist both ways for the landlord and the tenant.
What is often forgotten is that the tenant must maintain the property in a habitable state and ensure that the property never becomes a fire hazard.
It is worth looking at the Irish Property Owners site for their perspective……There is an obligation for all people to ‘Take Responsibility’. Government provides adequate funding is available to ensure their detailed websites catering for the homeless, the vulnerable, the Oasis site, the Community officers, the social worker, all work in an integrated way and change their sitution to a motivation that produces outcomes……not labels…….
K.T. Walsh
The onus may be on the tenant to upkeep the property – in an ideal world.
Property investment in the millions, used as a tax write off is depriving people of homes and private spaces.
Look at the O’Gara issue (Dartmouth Square)
The Adamstown Issue.
The Ballymun Issue.
Fatima Mansions.
These places were bad, but they had community organisations, voice.
Now the PPP is buying the land-filling it with private housing, the banks are offering zero% in mortgage/deposit so anyone can get on the property ladder, except it is creating a vicious circle of privitisation of homes/debt and borrowing.
Social housing like Healthcare is being privatised. (universal health insurance)
This creates problems down the line, it causes problems now. There are people who suffer accomodation disadvantage due to a variety of reasons, including marriage break-up, Drug addiction, ex-prisoners.
The onus is on the purchaser to repay, but if they fall off due to illness or the above reasons they join the poverty cycle, where:
The housing agencies are underfunded, un- communicative and under-nourished by intelligent investment.
Housing for single men and single women is unheard of.
Families get priority.
Families priced out of the property market end up in B+B’s.
These are not hidden problems.
The private market is unfailingly aggressive.
The public sector is a joke.
The support mechanisms are non-existent.
So whilst a landlord is creaming the tax-back allowances and making the tenant aware of responsibility to upkeep the property he/she is also sustaining the inflated prices of the property market which is preventing ordinary people just getting a home.
It’s not all black and white.
The hidden housing problem is ignored, except by the very politically committed.
In Dublin there are two TD’s (to my awareness, that will accompany and fight for the homeless)
Said it before single-issue human problems do not motivate the political parties who are too busy pretending to oppose the status quo to make this an issue.
to the vulnerable.
Yesterday, I visited the room in a listed Georgian House, in Dubln 4. First and foremost this was this woman’s home for 27 years. In earlier decades, she worked in the hotel industry and we all know this was about low pay and long hours.
Why can this happen? It is not necessarily the Landlord who is at fault but the lack of services and most important their lack of ability to integrate.
The story goes that Communiy Health services work……(but do they, definitely not my experience). The Landlord ought to notify the Community Officer who then ought to attain the rights of the woman i.e. from a lawyer who can transact the business. The woman may be entitled to rehousing and a once off payment. The Catholic or other Church may have a part to play. Most of all people must be kinder to others.
The point is the woman ought not face such this appalling trauma at this age of her life or nobody else. The Government must motivate their civil servants to work with some level of impetus and empathy for their fellow human being.
Michelle Clarke
and thank you for confirming my suspicions about the poor social policy endavours. for a forming underclass.
I wrote a considerable number of letters to those places you are supposed to interact with when you are in ‘desperate’ need of housing, mental health care, even the Citizens Advice Burteau solicitor…..Comhairle, Oasis etc.
Words are said on the phone but effective policy is just not funded. The window dressing is the website and anyone searching a property when in dire need would right to be most hopeful.
Well let me tell you………Life on the path of Eviction from a Georgian Home in Dublin 4 and other areas, is about passing through revolving doors, something similar to being in the mental health clone going in and out of hospital during a given year.
The Church – yes I tried……..
Threshold……..Yes, I have written
HSE, HSE Research, written at every level that ought to provide
Mental Health Commission, in person. Referred on to Inspector
Community Officer
Mental Health Associations (myriad)
Department of Environment – Dublin Civic Council
PRTRB
Labour Ministers Councillors, FF, FG, Sinn Fein, Independents etc.
The site provides something for everything but the question is if you have fallen out of your nest and in need of a home, well I am waiting for positive feedback!!!!!!!! It is no wonder our homeless numbers are rising. There ought to be a tax brought in on vacated houses in the City, this might speed up solicitors to get probate and criculation of property going in say Fitazilliam Square, Elgin Road, Merrion Square etc. There is room for tax planning here, compliance with the Green legislation after Christmas and other gems……but get a move on atttitudes
There is a most interesting site on Derelictions……..I witness so many around the D4, D6, D8 areas. What about some policy; find the owners pay and fair price and bring people back into our city……..
If the health service was privatised all these subsidised units within the umbrella would be rationalised and the key factor would be Rationalisation……..O’Leary style……..who wants frills when people are homeless, have community health problems, are mentally ill and not integrated……….
I want to add that the people who did react confirm that good people exist; willing people; moral people; Let us stop the bloated bureaucracy being window dressing and start a process of Mentoring so that we can empower people not to fall between the cracks!!!!!
Michelle
Quotation
‘You have to be the change you want to see in the world’
The issue of hidden housing problems is delineated in a report called ‘Accomodation Disadvantage’ published by the National Women’s Council of Ireland. It is a good report . I have met through schools and other groups a huge amount of people who suffer from the lack of a home and whilst the TD’s(of which I can name two) go with them to the housing and homeless sections, they are often
18-24 months homeless.
The disparate elements of this disadvantage and why it has not become a strong political lobbying force is because these cases are extreme and separate- that is they happen to small groups of people who may not have a political connection and it may be the first time in their lives that they are politicised . I would suggest that you
contact your local TD – and make an appointment to meet him/her in the Dail.
You are entitled if you feel that you are not accommodated or spoken to with respect and clarity to have someone, like a TD attend any interview with you. Making the threat of homelessness
a political issue is difficult given the isolation of people caught up in disadvantage cycles- be it through isolation or rampant high pricing and accquistion of property for tax purposes.
Putting housing on the Political agenda would require some degree of commitment to the issue of publicising disadvantage and how right-wing governments treat the most vulnerable in our societies. Currently I know two families in this situation and the
housing section is doing little to help – it is coming up to christmas too.
a bed-sit, in Dublin 4, (like many others), has been left in her home until the middle of January………..Humanity at least to have a roof over her head for the Christmas period………
I am quite in despair of services as nobody replied to this article and my notes……I sent a lot of emails.
However, I was really surprised to receive a letter my post from Ruari Quinn.
This was not just a platitude but solid advice and references.
Thank you Mr. Quinn for the care for a person in D4 and the courtesy.
Michelle Clarke
Thankfully all people in the house in Mountjoy Square are safe; apparently it is sublet into flats, with an insufficient hall door to stop people entering and sleeping the night out…..at a substantial risk to others.
How many of these houses have we? Why? Who owns them? Who is responsible for the tenants rights and those of the landlords? I suggest it is just a hazy form of agreement that alleviates the Government from building houses in line with social demand.
This is unjust.
If people had died last night, would we know? If this happens in any of these run down properties of landlords and heriditary estates, would we know, would we have made adequate changes?
The Prime Time researched the property market for the programme on Auctioneers, Management companies and letting before Christmas.
The Celtic Tiger jumped in the 1990’s, the ideas, the plans were there based on similar projects in other countires, so blocks of apartments now adorn our cities, and towns…….they are everywhere but the secret has yet to unfurl about co-operation and management companies and the effective running of apartments schems and housing estates.
Everyone ought to beware of no legislation therefore inadequate Health and Safety Conditions. Alert yourself to the Law Reform and make the necessary submissions.
Again I am glad the people are safe this morning but I would like to know what percentage of negligence applied to the letting of these rooms and if compliance of the Landlord with tenants is registered with the PRTB.
I walk in Dublin 4 a lot and many of the houses of Georgian renown exist here intermingled with those of the new rich and those that are awaiting demolition for Development and house a myriad of people in the meantime.
Elgin Road comes immediately to mind……There are a number of houses near vacant with people living in them and no doubt facing eviction……..The Church of Ireland stands in glory in the midst as does the US embassy.
If you live in apartments or tenancies, extra reponsibility is needed. There is an obligation to other neighbours and this should be endorsed by legislation. Any views?
Remember, in the case of social housing, it is the State who pays the landlord for the tenancies yet the State fail to protect the occupiers rights’. The State are answerable to taxpayers for the provision of housing…….
Jack Russell
Quotation Victor Hugo
‘The supreme happiness of life is the conviction that we are loved…’
Evictions, known as ejectments, still happen in Ireland.
It seems hard to imagine that people can fall through a net and into hostel accommodation.
Private Landlords were written about in the papers today. Private Landlords are in property for profit as a capital gain or rental income.
Certain areas like Dublin 2, 4, 6, etc. have seen properties expoentially increase during the Celtic Tiger period. This is good for the landlords but where the property has development potential, it is bad news for the tenants who may have lived in the house for decades.
Let us be aware and show some understanding to people who are vulnerable.
Jack Russell to his friend Danny Boy Michael Collins.
Henry Davide Thoreau (1817-62) US Essayist, Poet, and Naturalist
‘Disobedience is the true foundation of liberty. The obedient must be slaves.
But yet a major investment to the owner. Properties in these areas have soared and some into the millions. Then there are those that form probate issues and can get lost in solictiors practices for years on end…….often without any person living there and become an attactive option for people who just walk, move in – yes, squatters.
Our person worked for 30 years and lived in the flat near Haddington Road, Dublin 4. She paid the rent. Possibly, she thought nothing would ever change, but it did as one family died off and others just saw a large cash inherritance policy for children in the new vogue of regentrifying property.
There is legislation to protect but as with all things now it about testamonials, tax compliance, health, sarlary, rental supplemtn. To some people this rases Fear……the fear car orignate in childhood, maybe part of eviction but Fear is a real deterrent to application forms, files, questions.
We need to take a reality check and engage with people facing homelessness. The woman remains scared to proceed with deal offered and seems to want to remain at the house she has been 30 years.
No developer who bought the house for same 5 years ago will sanction this but thanks to Ruari O’Connor and Grace, I have to say, we may find some ways in. At near 60 years’ of age, with a dog she dlove, a person like this deservices a house, to suit her needs rather than fall into the cracks of a system that leaves you homeless.
Think about walking through the old Georgian Streets in the City and look at the unoccupied…..There must be some potential here given th3e proximity to the city and to ensure accommodation tho those in need. Form a community in itself that runs day and night and that allows people to be watchful.
Gandhi
You have to be the change you want to see in the world.
Traumatic brain injury, bipolar and anxiety shorten considerably my day but sometimes, there is a social issue that is suffice to wake me and I write. My signt is haphazard and perception poor and of course I don’t remember unless by chance I see same on the Indymedia Page. Typos galore….
You might make out the message.
It is a pity I can’t make the amends now……
Michelle
Thrilled Indymedia is back in action. I really like the new format.
Is there anybody willing to do something different to assist a person who after 41 years was forced to leave her private rented home. The woman is in her 60’s and she is deaf.
Today on Joe Duffy’s show – I got a real surprise to hear a most enthusiastic daughter who is prepared to make a change. She drafted a letter, outlining their wants, the willingness to deal with the planning permission and pay for the costs of building. What inititative?
The area is Kimmage, Walkinstown…….Someone else may be able to fill in the details here.
The irony is that the mother has paid in rent over 41 years to a private landlord the price of the house several times over. The propietor has the property for sale and her mother has nowhere to go.
Hope someone has some suggestions here. More details may be supplied by Joe Duffy
woman lives alone in a room, in a valuable property, and has nowhere to go………
It is my humble belief that the Community Welfare Officer/District nurse operate in an integrated way to ensure that people who worked decades, paid tax are treated with human dignity, in the case where there is a change of owner of a property.
What is the point in making laws, setting up Property Residendial boards etc. if people can be told that after 27 years in a bedsit, that they must move on. How easy is it for people to access the so called system.
Where is the Affordable Housing? More importantly where is the equivalent to corporation housing that existed in this city in the early decades after Inndependence in 1921. Those houses in areas like the South Circular Road, and Cabra that now sell for in excess of 0.5 million euros….
I have looked at the Dublin City Council site today for Affordable Housing……it is most informative and reassuring!!!! A joke yes!
In the last number of days, I have met a woman expecting a second child living in an apartment, being informed in writing that the Landlord plans to sell at that her family must leave in one month…….This is Ireland?
The people of Ireland expect more and have been used to more………remember Kimmage, Tallaght, Ronanstown, Blanchardstown, Moyross, Shannon —— Then there was a real housing crisis in existence. I can recall the 1970’s in County Meath and families living in mobile homes………Let’s get real and let’s hear some reality time Independent Ireland trying to forge an existence for its people in line with Ideas of the Proclamation. Recall all those emigrants of the 1950’s and the 1980’s, the remittances home to nurture a new country.
The third person I have met has been on the laughable Affordable List for a number of years also. This person alas has very poor health and needs a home…..but she has waited years, and health has deteriorated to an intensive care unit…….Where is the heart of the people?
Yes, we have private landlords taking up the flack and shortages from the obligations the State used to have……but what guantees exist here. The Landlord can decide to sell and yes, there is the PRTB but I believe this is only 50% effective so where is the security of tenure for people and in particular to ensure as stable an environment for our children…..
Does anyone know what happens in Europe? Perhaps some ideas are out there. I would like to hear something about this.
This is a country where people have made significant gains in the SSIA’s investments and contrary to the Economic gurus, people held back from holidays, cars, and purchasing property abroad and instead paid of their overdafts and credit card debts. Well done to these people and thanks also to State Agencies like MABS and TV programmes e.g. Eddie Hobbes and David McWilliams. The common sense factor therefore still remains.
We now need to get forcused on pensions and I think there are suggestions to try SSIA investment vehicles and come up with affordable houses and/or secure letting arangements for long term tenants by say an Insurance company or partnership.
What does a person do when unexpectedly they are about to have a child and the landlord chooses to sell on………Who can sort out this conundrum? Situations remain too lose….for people who rent until such time as they manage to get on the housing ladder.
Is is the Community Welfare Officer? If so, how effective is the system of administration and how motivated are they to be in the best interests of those who are in need especially given that Ireland is now a ‘Knowledge’ economy?
Michelle
Government put in train the Private Residential Tenancy Board in 2004. It is located at the Construction Industry Federation on the Canal, Dublin 8.
Private Landlordism takes over from Dublin City Council past history of being the Landlord of the State, providing for people in need. What are the teething problems? Who has been adversely affected? And What can be done to solve critical situations for people on the housing lists and with small children particularly……
The PRTB appear over-burdened with requests so the system fails to be as efficient as the legislation, and adjudication system as distinct from the traditional courts, evisaged.
This is not acceptable. I heard someone say today that if the Landlord negotiates a deal through a Management Company/Estate agency, this limits their responsibility; i.e. the tenant needs to negotiate through the Agent with the Landlord. Is this not weighted in favour of Landlord particularly where one months’ notice is permissible, inspite of unexpected personal circumstances of the family letting the apartment with a rent allowance?
Is this good enough given investors have been provided with major tax incentives for many years now to supply housing/apartments for people receiving rent allowance……..
Jack Russell
Quotation Gandhi
‘You have to be the change you want to see in the world’
I note article on nominations for Senate for Trinity College.
As a University, housing and health social policy must be high on the agendas proposed by senators e.g. Ivana Bacik, Rosemary McDoanagh, Dr. Hilliard (Psychiatry), Shane Ross. etc
This country needs to redress the balance between rich and poor. The divide is not meeting a sensible equilibrium.
Affordable housing became a nonsense as housing prices quadrupled. Negative equity, may make changes in market forces but if it does let us not fall into the trap in the UK 1980’s/90’s. Let us be aware.
Stop Evictions occuring where people cannot pay back their loans….something can be done like a waiver or some sound financial advice. There ought be only limited evictions in Ireland ever……..there can always be a redistribution of wealth to fix the balance……The brains exist particularly in the like of the Financial Services sector……Whe I lived in London in the 1980’s this group of people lost their homes, their porsche cars too.
We need avoidance planning at all times and a change in attitudes.
Fergus Finlay’s words are wise about children and family supports…..these children are Ireland’s future.
Michelle
Our banks are ‘battered’….recession has been decided upon…….the rest is about talking down morale, spirit and imagination of a people who are capable of surviving. Survival surely is the middle name of the Irish.
What about a review of attitudes and approaches to work, to housing commitments, to taxation, to property, and innovation.
The foregoing postings about evictions in Dublin 4 is written over two years ago. What we do know, if we read this in earnest, is that nothing has changed, the bureaucracy is worse – public bodies seek higher salaries, instead of considering the necessity to stall payments (for the greater good for say one year), on the basis that the Government would approach certain areas that are prone to corruption, underpayment of tax, a merger and acquisition strip…etc.
If the people committed to the future of the Island of Ireland, taking account of distinct financial contributions made to the Peace Initiative for the Island of Ireland, to the establishment of the Land Commission in the 1920’s and the redistribution of land in Ireland (particularly let us remember that the Annuities to be paid were cancelled by the De Valera government) which firmly establishes ever since the foundation of the State that Ireland as beneficial owner of the land accrued considerable wealth (and still accruing) with minimum payment. Interestingly, this simulates what President Mugabe of Zimbabwe (Rhodesia) has been trying to effect since signing the Lancaster Agreement in 1980. Surely this ought to form an interesting comparison for the Irish and the subject of being decolonised with the purpose of re-distribution of wealth…..And the Wealth we hold now. Our Banks…….reflect the banks in other markets. Ireland is a participant of globalised banking and the consequences are unknown.
Suggestions raised in previous postings.
This year houses sold have to meet Energy requirements. Perhaps this may explain that while Boomtime Celtic Ireland reigned there was no apparent development of our old Georgian Houses, as one would expect. I live near Baggot Street and what facinates me is the number of properties with three stories of accommodation above is vacant. Why, I know there is tax relief for developing flats about businesses. It would suggest that property owners have held these properties for long periods of time and are waiting or markets to yield further gains. The answer here is encourage them to sell or penalise with tax for vacant property say in the D4/D6location.
I see know sense in the visible homeless people along the canal or seeking harbour in the parks or doorways, if alternative arrangements can be found. Likewise, the houses that have been refurbished for their wealthy often ex-pat owners that stand, resplendid, with cleaner and gardener and behind electric gates. A small tax or even commitment to social inclusion within their borough is not too much to ask. Say in our area the promotion of the canal, a library. …..
Then you have say Elgin Road……One time the home of the Victorian elite, their staff, the horses, convered to near tenements with many families. The US embassy stands in an authoritative way looking out on Ballsbridge, and Elgin Road, Clyde Road and over into Herbert Park. Houses facing St. Bartholmew’s Church and garden either represent the new wealth, the professional elite, who pay the price and renovate the house, the grounds and of course add in the electric gates….the swanky cars. But then Taoiseach Cowen, think back to your days at University and you find houses owned by the great unknown speculators either boarded up and gated or…….housing many tenants who interests are not upheld by their Masters or their Masters Keepers…….This is grossly unacceptable in the integrity scales. This we can change by using the taxation tool while markets have faltered.
Promote with vigour that people get the Euros10,000 approx. tax allowance for providing a room in a house. Help people to grasp the significance and maybe introduce some similar allowance for the elderly to live in hotels and get tax relief. We have too many hotels and bankruptcy would be a real disappointment. We need to be committed to ensure that old peoples’ life savings will not be subject to ‘appropriation’ by state authorities. Let this be the avenue of last resort to our old people.
I hear nobody talk about inheritance. If in 1983, you bought a house, for 34,000 pounds – by 1987 as you emigrated due to work, it was valued at £27,000 and during the boom times was worth say Euros500,000. I would say, this is about the ‘rough with the smooth’ and if you contextualise the reduction in CGT to 20% leaves the equation equitable. Is this fair to say the person who has lived in a very large house with an elderly person who leaves the house to them?
There are many ways to tighten up the Ship, its Bankers, the load……destination home…..We need no mutineers…….The Revenue Chief assures us that there are more shores for them to visit to put a hault to greedy people who don’t want to share their spoils with their fellow countrymen……..
The Banks need liquidity……..i.e. money….so that they can lend to people who will take entrepreneurial risks and create funds….just as the ideation that kickstarted the Celtic Tiger….
Michelle
Jack Russell
Mr. Russell
I think we are the only two that realises there is a Recession. This morning, what shocks me, is that the pint of milk has gone up by 30%. I have also noticed that numerous basic foods show vast increases in prices in the major shopping outlets in Dublin. I know it is silly question, Jack Russell, but what salary does the Consumer Watchdog receive? The Irish Times today states that Cowen has told departments involved with Tribunals that it will not provide funding to pay lawyers or other Tribual Staff after public hearings end. It is amazing that only now the Government are becoming aware of the numerous multi barrister millionaires which have emerged in the last 10 years from the tribunals concerning corruption.
Now Mr. Russell – just one very important question for the elite academic left – the Irish tax payer will eventually have forked out 1 billion euros on tribunal fees. The sad thing is that not one individual has been jailed for their part in planning corruption. We are a laughing – let us face it? We allowed this to happen. Ray Burke was jailed for tax evasion and nothing else. Redmond was jailed for tax and for not telling the full truth to the tribunals but let us not forget as to why Bertie Ahern set up the Tribunals in the first place…’To find out where was the corruption in the planning and development all over Ireland’. All anybody with half a brain would have to do was go to the Galway Races and you would see all the developers, their wives dressed in silk, arriving by helicopter, paid for by the academic elite left. Bertie did remind us before he left that ‘he was a socialist’.
Mr. Russell – there is 115% increase in repossession in homes in Ireland and it is going to get a lot worse. Sadly it is always the young and more vulnerable people who are caught now in the negative equity market coming down the road.
Before I go Mr. Russell, I believe Biffo is preparing his speech for Mr. Sarkosy (the Big fellow) from France. It is reported on media today, which makes me laugh louder on the word democracy in relation to no to Lisbon. I hope our Taoiseach doesn’t have to apologise in anyway for our No vote – leaving out Lisbon, we have enough to worry about in this country. Our various ministers are on their foreign holidays soaking the sun up while some Irish pensioners have to scrape to the bottom of their handbags to find enough money to pay for a bottle of milk…..
Eviction or Ejectment.
The sad point is that as this recession bites deeper and more stealth taxes are raised, peoples chances of eviction move higher. The sad part is we don’t know the number of people being affected.
We hear we have to buy new bulbs, a directive, but they are expensive, then if we let or sell a property, we have to pay for a BER certificate (catch 22 scenario) or just leave the house empty…..
Now there is a tax on the second home!!!!
Where is the common sense!
The housing market is in free flow. Nobody knows when the over supply will halt the crazy situation some people find themselves in. For those who have bought their properties in the last five years, their reality is that they must remain employed, they must earn enough to pay the mortgage, they must hope that interest rates from the European Central Bank don’t start to rise (as happened in the 1980’s/90’s in the UK when rates moved from 7% to 14.5% in 6 months).
From all walks of life, there are people worrying about ‘Eviction or Ejectment’ as it is often referred to. For some it is sooner rather than later. For those in the later category, there will be those company directors who have engaged in securitised borrowing putting their property up as the security. This will include many of those who speculated, encouraged by the Govt.’s tax breaks and incentives and who are now part of the surplus supply of houses with sometimes 100% loans based on fairytale valuations – and these are the punters that are really indicted to a life time misery of no reprieve due to lax and de-regulated practices of the Banks and lending societies.
How do we measure the pain? How can we ensure that children whose parents become unemployed are not caused a childhood of undue stress due to repossessions and evictions. There must be a strategy.
The woman on the Joe Duffy Show today spoke of being evicted from her home with her 4 children yesterday. The Gardai were present (precautionary) focus. The bailiffs allowed her to leave her furniture in the house until today. What does this woman and her children do! Who provides for her now when it is the Co. Council who provides her accommodation.
I presume she must go to her Community Welfare Officer or the HSE. Then she must inform them as to why the Co. Council evicted (yes, they suspected she had a partner whom she failed to notify them about). The campaign in Government and the reason for tax breaks was to remove state involvement in the provision of nationalised housing through the Corporation and Co. Councils. The move was to encourage speculators to take over the role as landlords and encourage them to be the speculators.
Now is the creation of a further mire of Bureaucracy and nonsense. The foregoing postings since 2006 form an outline Agenda that can be created before the Budget goes up a notch with more stealth taxes on property.
We cannot rely on the public service to release us from our housing problems, because before the crisis, and at a time when the mortgages were fluid, we realistically are aware that the public services were grossly inadequate. Many speculators who have been spared the pain until now, will find that they have been short changed by a public service that had reputation of efficiency.
I ask the question has anyone looked to the records of the HSE and Community Welfare people; to their relationship and deals with certain privileged estate agents during the boom years. Rent allowance duplications did occur and if you ‘suffered’ try getting some accountability from the Public Bodies.
We need a simple Balance Sheet done before Christmas. We need to look at the people in immediate need. We need to see what rental property stock exists. We need to find the value of the properties and write-down the potential losses.
Then we need to look to the number of houses available for rent, their locations, work potential, school places.
MAB’s have been around for a few years. Now is the time to test their abilities and lateral creativity.
Repossession applications have almost trebled in 2 years.
We need help at all levels. A person’s home is a person’s right and we who can avert making people homeless must intervene.
Galway City Council preside in a City Hall that appears to be utterly unaccountable for the actions of its officials. In some cases it’s hard to believe that the Councillors actually know what’s going on. They are certainly unwilling, as I know, to take any action against even the rudest behaviour of their officers. Must we all resort to the Ombudsmann? Or to the Freedom of Information Act? For €15, it might be worth the while of the woman from Galway so recently evicted from her home, to avail of this service and get all documents relative to her case.
People who are already housed in State Housing need to alert themselves to the fact that the Policy Changes under Eamon Ryan Minister for the Energy plan to continue their Green ethos and are promoting the retro-fitting of their social housing stock over a 10 year period.
This sounds good. I wonder will this include solar panels to the roof because my understanding of this is that it would provide for 80% heat needs.
This is a plus factor to boost Social Housing Stocks versus the turmoil of the over supplied market and speculators now in existence.
2006 Celtic Tiger days roaring ahead and there were casualties of Landlords then.
2012, 6 years later and what is happening? Do we know? Do we really care? Do you realise many of the people you meet in a day’s work have real fears of being caught and brought before the courts because they are unable to pay their mortgages, because their mortgages are in negative equity. The reality is that after the boom has come a greater crash than ever occurred in the history of our Republic.
Debt forgiveness is bandied around but human nature counters its application. Yet, we need our non competitive Banking systems to wake up and smell the coffee. AIB, Bank of Ireland, Anglo Irish, Permanent tsb are sitting prim and proper without tackling the business ethos that we need to get economic growth back on track. In the US, they are beginning to put pressure on banks to get back into the mortgage game because a country needs to have home owners, just as banks need to have customers who pay them interest so that they can attract depositors and pay them interest on their money. In Ireland, bankers are sitting on the fence. They are paying inadequate interest, advising people to invest their money across the border and just waiting to find out if they will receive a good severance package. People should focus in on capital outflows since the crisis, this is about business potential lost to our State.
What is happening to people who are going through the courts for debts? What do the judiciary feel when they grant a repossession? Where does the family go to, stripped of assets, pensions, income and now Minister for Justice has thrown in that jewellery should be valued to and an allowance of a few hundred is acceptable!
Compassion, understanding, integrity, justice are the strong words that should be part of our daily brief. We must learn from the greed and destruction earlier times. Stop cronyism, corruption and let us get focused on seeking ‘write downs’ in debt both for home loans, business loans and loans that our country cannot actually repay ie compound interest and debt repaying cumulative debt. Ask the Government to be stringent in their negotiation with the ECB/Troika for write-down of proportion of the debt, it is the only humane way to proceed.
Santayana
Crisis is upon us and for some the commitment to being law abiding citizens of the Island of Ireland has placed the all powerful Revenue Commissioners into the role of masters of the Realm so the decision is either pay or be fined or charged with evasion of tax.
130,000+ are reported to have already paid but who really asks the question about those pressured by debt and left in abeyance still. How are they expected to find the money to pay between £300-£400 this year, which will be double next year. Socialists in Europe may agree with the property tax but their circumstances are different. Ireland received too much credit from the banking policies associated with the ECB, we did not have the regulation in place at the Central Bank, and the people were enticed into a property market that constantly re-assured them buy now and you will double your money. Social housing saw their opportunity to back out of building houses because they knew people would follow the winner market. Ireland is not the only country who have these ‘Mortgage Delinquents’ as called by Elderfield in the Central Bank – other countries like America and the UK have experienced same.
LPT now is about hardship for many and is inequitable. The options we have are none. The Revenue encompasses fear in the ordinary God Faring person so imagine the strain on people at present. Those who really ought to be targeted are often those who hold character traits that are consistent with success be it ordinary crime or white collar crime – they don’t have fear and can be often narcissistic, and not necessarily guided by conscience. They make money and they believe they determine how to spend it best and that is not by making tax returns to their country of birth. They choose the more exotic life of being economic exiles, with their hands firmly in their home territories pockets through sportsmanship contributions, charities, investments that yield their names on designated buildings in our university campuses. Even Bono et al headed for Holland for his tax, having availed of so many tax benefits granted by Ireland to their artists.
The pension funds of the public sector have been targeted. What happens when all the data is collated in the Revenue with self-assessed values made by the owners of property in Ireland submitted most notably before the banks enforce the evictions. The Troika are telling the teachers to get their students to be diligent and make written reports based on honesty. Will we have an asset base of properties with an expected yield ready and available for the Troika to apply fiscal rectitude measures, with minimal effort.
Cyprus is an example of ‘expect the unexpected’. The swoop was eagle eyed….they knew the Russians invested in the banks and businesses…the swipe in the eye was freeze deposit accounts and take 60%….at first it was all accounts but pressure brought to bear by the ordinary people of Cyprus in protest ensured that those under £100,000 did not have such forfeiture (ie yet).
Swift
Fr McVerry spoke on the radio this morning about the homeless and his 30 years of dedication to their cause without the support of a board of directors. He went on to endorse the power the new approach with the appointment of dedicated people to ensure provision for the homeless.
What caught my attention: He clearly conveyed that his motivation is for Homelessness not to exist. I wholly endorse this. For me today, a young woman sitting outside the Spar shop looked tired and why wouldn’t she? Camden Hall for women is closed down and last night she had to sleep out. This woman is off hard drugs and making the effort to stick to methadone. No woman, in a country, so replenished with vacant, under utilised property, should have to sleep on the streets.
To the Politicians: Bedsit land was Dublin 4, 6, 8, Phibsboro and so forth. We endorse completely that landlords must adhere to the legislation introduced in February 2013 (after all, they had 4 years to comply) but who enabled them to be so neglectful not to include provision to ensure that those living in such accommodation would not be serviced with notices of eviction dates and instructions to find alternative accommodation without some form of statutory protection. Imagine receiving a letter from a solicitor telling you that after 12 or 27 years in a house, you have say 112 days to find a new home, without supports from Dublin City Council or elsewhere for that matter, and if you have not found a place, the EVICTION will occur in this case in October 2013.
Speak out. Too many people often with disabilities, single men back from working in construction abroad in the 1980’s, and people who have worked and remained as tenants for decades are struggling with no supports to achieve the basic right of having a home, without the threat of being made homeless.
Rents are rising and although the PRTB web page is comprehensive, many of these people are not computer literate and are excluded. The goose chase to find a home is enabled and facilitated by the most elaborate of web pages but the fact is we have people excluded and facing the homeless rung of the ladder and imminently while the former landlords of these houses use the legislation to sell on and make serious capital gains on these properties. Surely, a contribution of money should be sought from the landlord to pay the local authority to prioritise the tenant on the housing list.
Blake
Well done to the people who are assisting other people to keep a roof above their head. I have read this story which apparently goes back many years ago, keep up the great work, ye all should apply to the appropriate government departments requesting monetary grants with a view to employing caring people, such as your good selves and others, in the field, going out in all weathers seeking poor people that perhaps, following a brief mild interrogation of which your team may be quite capable of conducting over a flask of tea or coffee are awaiting execution of eviction notice to intervene on their behalf when all seems lost, May is suggest a personal donation of say, E250, from my person to start you off . How do i get in touch or would the persons who are presently undertaking this humanitarian intervention on behalf of people, who are less well of than ourselves have the benefit of an office or contact private post box number , this story has touched my heart in a way not many true stories have done before, you are the equivalent of Guardian Angels whether you are aware of it or not… Keep up your great unselfish work , hoping others who are reading this story of goodness may put their hands in their pockets to assist their fellow human beings who are on the brink of homelessness no matter what part of Dublin they presently exist within .