Culturally appropriate homes: Building a future for and with Travellers

Brian Dillion, CEO of Cena, a Traveller-led approved housing body, charts the progress that’s possible when a community is given the space and power to determine its own accommodation responses.

Travellers continue to suffer some of the worst living conditions of any section of the Irish population (and it's likely replicated across the UK). A high proportion are living in overcrowded conditions, lacking basic amenities, frequently in unsafe or hazardous conditions. The ongoing accommodation crisis has knock-on effects for health (especially mental health, with a suicide rate that is seven times higher than the settled population); but also for prospects of members of the Traveller community for any meaningful progression through education or employment. 

Responses to this ongoing accommodation crisis have so far fallen short and have consistently failed to meet targets and objectives set, as acknowledged in officially-sponsored reviews of the situation, both at Irish and European levels. Accommodation policy to date (typified by segregated and isolated settlements on the fringes of urban areas) has contributed to social problems, dysfunctional communities, social divisions and prejudices that are already deeply engrained in society. 

To address critical accommodation needs, Cena (the word means ‘home’ in the Traveller language) was founded as a new kind of approved housing body in 2018. Traveller-led, Cena exists in the firm belief that more effective, sustainable and just solutions can be found if the community itself is given the space to formulate and implement its own accommodation responses. 

Achievements of Cena to date 

In our relatively short operational history, we have made what we consider to be remarkable progress on a number of fronts, including:

• The design and construction of Traveller-appropriate accommodation (nine homes in group housing situations and 12 individual properties purchased in five counties). We currently are involved in the planning of a further 22 homes. 
• Training of our own tenant liaison officers (TLOs), now competent in both needs assessment and tenancy management. All of our TLOs are members of the Traveller community, essentially important in ongoing efforts to build self-determination, a future-oriented vision, and improved relationships between settled and Traveller residents.
• Establishment of solid working relationships between Cena, local authorities and other approved housing bodies. We have developed our own (what we see as ‘Traveller-appropriate’) models of needs assessment, strategic accommodation planning, home design and feasibility studies. These we are actively sharing with eight local authorities and three of the larger AHBs.

Challenges we continue to face

While our progress has been significant, we still face considerable challenges.

Our success to date, and most certainly our prospects of future success, depends greatly on our capacity to maintain Traveller leadership. While we have established a very effective and supportive working relationship with the relevant government department, it is outside the remit of policy governing AHBs to provide assistance with coordination through core funding.

Cena is an exceptional situation as an AHB in that:

1. We are dealing with a legacy of outstanding failure in provision of Traveller accommodation. We must deal with this, while at the same time addressing a whole range of social challenges arising out of failed accommodation policy – both within the Traveller community and between the Traveller and settled communities. We could argue very convincingly that building homes is the easier challenge. Building self-determination and a secure future for our tenants is much more difficult, demands more time and is critically under-resourced.
2. We know that our success in the future will depend upon the extent to which we can build and maintain Traveller capacity in Cena to engage, to understand and to build long-term relationships. This is again one key function we uniquely face, for which no support is available.
   In overall terms, there is the prospect of meeting the critical accommodation needs of a sizeable proportion of the Traveller population in a short period of time. More important is the fact that this delivery will hold out the very real prospect of a lasting and sustainable solution – avoiding the serious mistakes of the past, heralding new hope for the Traveller community and community relations in Ireland.