URBAN DECAY AND DEPRESSION NEAR THE BIKE YARD AT RYDER’S ROW
A street named Ryder’s Row is without doubt an appropriate address for a Bike Yard business.
The area is question is a triangle of properties formed by Ryder’s Row, one end of Capel Street and one short section of Capel Street.
There was a derelict site to the right of the bicycle yard which was converted into a mini public-park which immediately became a magnet for rough sleepers at night and students during the day. Daytime users were not a problem but from about 7pm it became a place to be avoided.
Sadly a person believed to be sleeping rough was found dead in the park. This was the second homeless person to die in the immediate area in recent times. One, who died, was a well known local character who wandered the city together with his little dog in a shopping trolley.
The mini-park is currently fenced off and unavailable as a public space.
This semi-derelict complex is behind a house of note on Capel Street. Described as a Dutch Billy it is one of a small number of extant examples of Dublin’s rich pre-Georgian architectural heritage, many of which have now been demolished or unrecognisably altered. In fact, it is one of only a few surviving intact on Capel Street, a thoroughfare once dominated by these structures.
This tent is at the emergency door to a building that I worked in about twenty years ago. Recently the immediate space at Wolfe Tone Close has been converted into a public space or mini-park .
In 1979 I moved to California and when I first visited San Francisco I was shocked to see homeless people living on the streets. This was a new experience for me but a few years later I came across rough sleepers in Paris.
Since then I worked for a multinationals and have been based in a number of different countries but in 1999 I decided that I wished to be based in Ireland and to avoid travel as much as possible. Therefore, I purchased an apartment on Bolton Street. Since then I noticed a gradual, but accelerating, increase in homeless people living on the streets near me. In the beginning people did not believe me and most insisted that they must be drug addicts.
In 2019 I had hoped that the number sleeping rough had peaked but now in 2021 it has become much worse as almost every shop door and spare space has at least one resident homeless person and many now have tents.
Yesterday, I noticed one on Pearse street feeding pigeons from his tent. Today, a lady introduced herself as Fiona and she knew my name as we had both attended a course when I retired in 2011. She became homeless a year later and has lived on the streets, on and off, ever since.
Wolfetone Close is a complex of public housing flats developed by Dublin Corporation [now Dublin City Council] about twenty years ago but unfortunately the area in my photographs remained unfinished until a few months ago.
The complex is on Wolfe Tone Street near the corner with Parnell Street, opposite the Virgin Cinema complex. It occupies a piece of land bounded by Jervis Street, Parnell Street, and Wolfe Tone Street that for many years consisted of large ugly carparks and a number of derelict buildings.
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