Two-and-a-half years ago, Léna Descottes (29) thought her time in Ireland was over. Despite being a traditional-music performer who had played in venues across the country, she had spent the previous six months sleeping primarily in her car. Descottes was unable to find accommodation after, she says, the apartment she had been living in was converted into an Airbnb.
“I wouldn’t say that I was homeless because if I had called my parents in France, they would have given me money to stay in a hotel,” she says. “I didn’t tell them that I had been living on my friends’ couches and in my car, and that I had to squat in places sometimes. That was really hard because I have two degrees, I speak two languages, I play four instruments.
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