Margaret Weldon lives with her two sons in a bright, clean modern home in Swords, Co Dublin, which she rents from a private landlord. She says she has always paid the £600 monthly rent on time, and has kept the house in good order.
Last January her landlord told her he wanted possession of the house, and so far Ms Weldon has been unable to find an alternative home for herself and her sons, David (16) and Michael (nine).
She has been served with a Circuit Court order to quit the house by the end of March.
Although she has been on the local authority housing list for three years, Fingal County Council has nothing to offer her. Relentless searching for privately-owned rental accommodation in her price range has proved fruitless.
She has paid the £600 rent with the help of a £515 Supplementary Welfare Allowance (rent subsidy) from the Northern Area Health Board. Separated from her husband, she lives on a £115-a-week deserted wives' allowance, plus £80 a month children's welfare and an £8-a-week fuel allowance - about £145 a week.
She says she cannot afford to work because she would lose the rent subsidy and would also have to pay for childcare.
She first got notice to quit in January from the auctioneers with whom she had been dealing. "I had never met the landlord until he called to the house in March asking me when I was going to get out," she recalls.
"I have nothing against him really. He wants the house back because either he wants to move back in or he could get more rent for it. What makes me so angry is that there is no system or policy there to help the likes of me. The only protection out there is for landlords.
"I said to the landlord, `I don't want to be here in this situation either, but I've nowhere to bring the children'. When I moved in here I thought I'd be here just until I got a place from the council, but every time I ask about it they say I haven't enough points."
As soon as she got notice to quit she contacted the housing charity Threshold, which emphasised that she should not make herself and her family homeless, but should keep looking for an alternative.
Sitting in the living-room, she works her way through the large file of documents and correspondence she has kept meticulously. She says she has all but "given up looking for private rented accommodation".
She points to the classifieds in a newspaper. "You see. They are all looking for professionals, all looking for about £1,000 rent. And I haven't found one who would take an SWA tenant. There just doesn't seem to be anything out there for us."
In April she got further notice to quit. In June she was told the landlord would take her to court in November. During this time she has been looking for accommodation, seeking meetings with the housing unit in Fingal council and lobbying local TDs and councillors.
Fingal council advised her to contact the homeless persons' unit in Charles Street. Most of the public representatives, she says, were sympathetic but did little more than shrug their shoulders. That's the system, they said.
She appeared in court on November 29th and while the judge was kind, she says, he told her he had no choice but to follow the law, "and the law is that I will be thrown out of here in March".
Asked how her older son David is coping with the situation, she says he has recently developed an inflammation of the pericardium, the muscle around the heart, which the doctor has attributed to "the stress at the moment".
Asked how she is coping, she says that for most of the time she feels "as if this isn't really happening".
"I just have to keep going, hold my nerve. Sometimes, at the weekend, I say, `I'm not going to think about this until Monday', and I relax a bit. But I am optimistic. I am going to get through this. This is going to end. There has to be peace sometime."
Irish Lives will appear in The Irish Times each Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday and Friday until Christmas.