Dublin Homeless Awareness

Fairly late to this thread, but I’ll give my experience as a former volunteer of “Dublin Homeless Awareness”.

I was interested in joining their team for awhile. I followed them on Instagram, thought what they were posting was incredibly honorable work. I wanted to help the homeless community in Dublin. I wanted to do what DHA do, at least what their image on social media presents.

After getting my uniform and vest together, I ended up doing a “patrol” with them. I thought it was great. I felt proud and I was very excited and eager to help those in need.

What happens next occurs on one of the “patrols” after my first, I can’t remember the exact date. It was probably my second or third time being out with the group. An incident occurred in Temple Bar. An aggravated, drunken couple was hanging around where the streets of Temple Bar and Crown Alley join together. As we were walking up Crown Alley, away from Temple Bar street, The man shouted an insult at us. I cannot remember what he said. Now, at this point, any sound first responder or volunteer would have just left it at that and left, as it wasn’t your job to deal with a drunken, disorderly man. Unless you were the Gardaí. Unfortunately, the owner of the organisation wanted to stop and wait, to see if he would continue his abuse. Then the owner decided to have us walk back down after we observed the drunken couple walk away, out of view of us. I remember objecting to this decision to the owner and saying that we should just leave it be. The owner was dismissive of my concerns. We rounded the corner and the couple was right outside Auntie Nelley’s sweet shop. Of course, our appearance kicked him off again. The owner decided to confront him and arguing with the man about calling us names. Now both of them were insulting each other. It was expected from a drunken man, but definitely not expected from the owner of a volunteer organisation that was supposed to be professional and there to help.

I can’t remember what happened right after but we were beginning to walk away and a can that one of the drunken parties had was hurled at us, which hit the ground by our feet. This caused the owner and the other members to turn back around. Next thing I know, the other volunteers are in a physical altercation with the man, with the woman trying to defend the man. The man ended up spitting on one or two of the volunteers, angering them to force him to the ground and restrain him.

Note, this was one of my first “patrols” with them. I was completely distraught by their behavior. But what do I do? I am in the same uniform as them. I am supposed to look professional yet my co-volunteers were restraining a screaming, drunken man as if they were the police. “Hang on, aren’t we a Homeless Awareness organisation?”

The owner looked up at me and told me to call the Gardaí, referencing the non emergency numbers in order to contact them about getting the footage live on the cameras nearby and to send officers to our location to “assist” and arrest the couple. Unsure of those numbers, as I was not given them, he ended up calling them himself. I do not recall what the owner said on the phone as in that point in time, I was a deer in the headlights, with a crowd gathering on either side of us, many recording. (If anyone has such recording or has seen such a recording, I’d be appreciative if you could link it my way.) At some point my co-volunteers ended up releasing him and the couple ended up leaving through the Merchants Arch street. Apparently, the officer on the other end of the phone call told the owner to tail them and to try coarse them in the direction of Pearse Street Garda Station, in order to successfully point them out and have them arrested by Gardaí. They ended up getting out of our sight by the time we ourselves went through Merchants Arch and onto Wellington Quay.

I remember as we were moving on, the owner of Auntie Nellie’s sweet shop came out and started hurling abuse at me, as I was in the back of the group. He shouted at me, something along the lines of “you all assaulted him first”. I don’t remember what exactly I said but I attempted to defend my co-volunteers actions and then de-escalate. But he was having none of it. He thought we were jokes. I don’t blame him one bit. In fact, he was right. I just hate that I was lumped in with my co-volunteers and their actions. But what could I do? I was attached to them because of our matching uniforms.

The volunteers that got spat on only had hand sanitizer to disinfect themselves. Talk about a biohazard nightmare.

We ended up going to the Pearse Street Garda Station and trying to contact a Garda there but from memory, I don’t believe anyone ever came out, or if one did, we were left waiting. I believe shortly after, either I left to catch the DART home or the group left to finish the so called “patrol”.

That was the end of that “patrol”.

After that, I chalked my second guessing of the group as just being my lack of experience with dealing with the belligerent, drunken public. I was led to believe that this is normal for the group to have these encounters but that it surely doesn’t happen that often. So I sort of forget about it.

I recall another incident that again, happened in Temple Bar late at night (I really wondered why we patrolled through a tourist trap, full of drunks and drama, where very little homeless people gather, when we were supposed to be helping the homeless.)

I believe we had entered into Temple Bar via Temple Lane, going towards The Temple Bar, the actual bar, and we witnessed a security guard restraining a woman for stealing merchandise. A belt if I remember correctly, which she was wearing and she claimed it was hers. The owner, again, decided to have us hang around. The HR manager was also with us that night and he refused to hang around as he thought the situation didn’t concern us, so he left with another volunteer and continued on. Even though the HR manager himself was very problematic, his reasoning for leaving the area made sense. We seriously didn’t need to stick around for some petty crime that only concerned the Gardaí. I did stick with the owner, as it was our “policy” to not leave a member on their own. Throughout the situation, I seen the owner just watching the situation. You could argue he was there to help the security guard just in case the woman decided to assault him, that’s what I thought too. But that’s until I voiced my concerns to him. Saying that this isn’t for us to be concerned. Multiple times I told him that we should just leave. Again, like the time before, he was dismissive. He even smiled about it as if he was entertained. I was growing frustrated. Eventually, the situation moved on, the owner started to talk to the woman and the Guards came along and picked her up. On we went with our night.

Another incident occurred, a very personal incident. I don’t feel comfortable sharing it here. But it involves gross misconduct dealt by the HR manager. Human Resources. Gross misconduct. Who would have thought? Who do you even go to in an organisation when you received gross misconduct from the HR? I told the owner. “I’m sure it was just a mistake” I was told. I felt disgusted. I tried my best to bury it and stay in the organisation. I wanted to help the homeless. I wanted to gain experience and knowledge in order to help people. But sadly, after it weighing on me, I couldn’t take patrolling, with the same person who behaved so horribly, anymore. I felt insulted that I was still on patrol with him, even after telling the owner what he did. It felt like a slap in the face. This was the last straw for me. I left the organisation shortly after this. I made it aware to the owner that this was the reason, that I couldn’t continue working with someone like that. I warned the owner of having someone like this in their organisation. This same HR manager, despite my warnings, is still in the organization to this day.

I highly recommend anyone looking to volunteer with Dublin Homeless Awareness, to completely avoid them. They may help the homeless here and there, but definitely not as much as they make it out to be on social media. There’s a reason why their patrol routes mainly target high traffic areas where there are people drinking and causing drama, where there aren’t many homeless. Only certain parts of the routes had homeless individuals. I recall an all-nighter patrol where we primarily focused on disorderly conduct outside Burger King and McDonald’s on O’Connell Street. Zero homeless were here. Only those who were getting into fights, being pepper sprayed by other offenders, even one person being knocked out. Again I wonder, why didn’t we primarily care for the homeless instead of spending most of our time next to crowds, watching fights? Why were we overlooking this like some vigilante group of cowboys? It was ridiculous.

This group purposely puts themselves in danger of being injured or worse. Their private Instagram group chat where they log incidents, was full of members being assaulted. There’s no surprise when you look at how they conduct themselves. I genuinely worry for the safety of the volunteers who genuinely want to help, but are mislead by the owners and certain volunteers in the group. They have created another group under the name of “Dublin Community Support”, which I can only assume is to vaguely cover what they already did with Dublin Homeless Awareness, but because of the latter name, they may have felt that their group shouldn’t be involved with what they were getting involved in. So they created a new group, with a more “fitting” name, in order to continue their patrols and to interact with the general public, rather than just the homeless, which is what “Dublin Homeless Awareness” implies. That is my opinion on their new group, anyway.

I’ll leave my submission at that. I apologise for such a long submission to this thread. I left the group last year and I have kept these thoughts with me. I was unsure about telling them on public forums. But after seeing their new group, their efforts to recruit, the praise they get and the features from media outlets such as Joe.ie, I couldn’t help but think some unfortunate person is going to be woo’d by their false image and experience the same things that I and other former volunteers have had. If you see them misbehaving, please record them and report them to the Gardaí.

Thanks for reading.