This article is more than 1 year old

This article is more than 1 year old

Dublin boasts a rich variety of tours – literary pub crawls, Guinness brewery tastings, Trinity College walkabouts, splashing through the Liffey dressed as a viking – but the latest one has a bleak, contemporary theme: homelessness.

A homelessness crisis in Ireland’s capital has prompted the launch of a walking tour, given by a formerly homeless guide, through an inner city of gritty streets and quiet desperation that tourists seldom see.

“We just don’t have the properties for the number of people that are working,” said Derek McGuire, leading a recent Secret Street Tour through the Liberties, a historical blue-collar neighbourhood. “Homelessness could become socially acceptable, become the norm.”

The 0.8-mile (1.3km) route includes areas where McGuire used to sleep rough for two years after losing his home in 2014, and passes five homeless hostels, with another six hostels nearby. The tour lasts 90 minutes and costs €10 (£8.90).

McGuire’s commentary includes homeless tips on staying safe, stashing possessions and blending into crowds. He mixes anecdotes about shelters – the decent, the bad, the awful – with stories about the Liberties’ eras of brothels, a heroin epidemic and “four corners of hell”, a junction of four pubs notorious for fights.

“Sleeping out in the city centre, that was my worst nightmare. I had to put on my Bear Grylls head,” said McGuire. “It was going to be about survival.”

Play Video 13:05 My life in a hotel room: Ireland’s hidden homeless crisis - video

The tour, which started last month, is the latest evidence of a nationwide housing crisis that has inflated rents, nudged the homeless population towards 10,000 and created a political backlash.

Thousands have marched through Dublin in recent months to demand rent control and more low-cost housing, and to accuse the government of being in the pockets of landlords, developers and “vulture funds”.

Activists have occupied vacant properties, in some cases leading to violent confrontations with private security teams sent to evict them.

The eviction of a family in County Roscommon last month triggered especially strong retaliation: about 20 masked vigilantes with baseball bats assaulted the security guards and arsonists firebombed two Dublin branches of KBC Bank, which had sent the guards to repossess the home.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Derek McGuire, a formerly homeless guide, on a street tour of Dublin. Photograph: Rory Carroll/The Guardian

Many musicians and artists are finding Dublin unaffordable. Stephen James Smith, the city’s unofficial poet laureate, is couch-surfing and considering leaving the city.

Homelessness-themed tours have sprung up in Manchester, London and other cities. A tour run by homeless people in Vienna inspired Tom Austin, a Trinity College graduate student, to bring the idea to Dublin. With co-founders Pierce Dargan and Gareth Downey, he obtained support from Dublin Simon Community, a non-profit organisation, and recruited McGuire to be the first guide, with hope that the scheme will expand with more guides covering other parts of the capital.

McGuire, who spent 25 years working in the voluntary sector, became homeless after a relationship ended and a property crash left him unable to pay his mortgage.

In early 2014 he packed a bag and headed to the airport – and stayed there for three weeks, posing as a traveller and snaffling restaurant leftovers. It was safe but demoralising: “My spirit was broken,” he said.

McGuire returned to the city and slept rough, refusing to seek assistance: “I had far too much pride. I’d sooner starve than ask people for money.” He was ragged by the time Merchants Quay Ireland, a homeless charity, offered him the temporary, shared accommodation that he now calls home.

Guiding has restored McGuire’s sense of identity. “I see this as an opportunity to tell my story,” he said. He said he expected homelessness to continue rising. Too few new homes are being built across Ireland. And a tech-fuelled boom is bringing hipster cafes and other signs of rent-fuelling gentrification to the Liberties, which is within walking distance of Facebook and Google offices.