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KIDS have so many shared experiences that they can all relate to; siblings are annoying, broccoli is horrible, homework at the weekend is just the worse. But there’s some things that only the 1,500 kids currently living in emergency accommodation around Ireland can relate to. Share if you agree!

1) Really easy games of hide and seek

Hide and seek is super easy to play in emergency accommodation; the single hotel room given to you, your mam and your siblings means that no matter how slow you count to a hundred, you’ll find whomever you’re playing against almost straight away. They’ll be in the closet, or the bathroom, or behind the pile of suitcases containing everything your family owns.

2) Every night is fast food night

Nothing beats a meal in emergency accommodation! With no facilities to cook on, your mam has to resort to giving you noodles or chips, or whatever she can afford to buy. Not much room for things like vegetables on the food budget, which means lots of tasty treats! Of course, you can’t run as fast as you used to and you don’t feel very well most of the time, but that’s a crisis for later on in life. Right now, you’re getting hot dogs for tea again!

3) School is awesome

Most kids hate school, but for the 1,500 kids living in emergency accommodation, it’s great! It’s somewhere to go during the day when you’re not allowed into your room, not like weekends when you have to leave between the hours of 10 am and 5 pm, with nowhere to go. Not having a place to do your homework (or emergency-accommodation-work, right?) means that you never really do well in class, and the last time you were re-housed it was in a B&B so far away that you had to switch schools, meaning that you have no real friends anymore. But still, it’ll be nice until you get moved again.

4) Not going near room 178

Being in emergency accommodation with your mam is safer than being at home with dad when he was drinking, but that doesn’t mean you can go wherever you want! Kids in emergency housing can all relate to the areas of the hotel that you’re not supposed to go near, because of the person living there. You’re not sure why, but your mam warned you; the person is really sad all the time or they might be dangerous or they just need to see a doctor but no doctor will see them. You never know who you’ll meet in emergency accommodation; it’s like the people in charge just took everyone that applied and stuck them all in the one place, just so it looked like they were doing something good.

5) Knowing your mam is useless and lazy and shouldn’t have had you

Before you got placed in a hotel room after losing your home, you thought that your mam was the best person in the world, and that she’d do everything she could to keep you safe and well. But everyone who hears about you guys having to spend 6 months living in a Travel Lodge on the side of a motorway seems to think that your mam must just be too lazy to go out and get a job, or that she’s just looking for a hand-out from the state. You read a thing online that said if your mam wasn’t able to provide for her family, she shouldn’t have had you in the first place. It must be the truth… maybe it’s the reason she sobs herself to sleep every night?