Another Year, Another Record High of Homelessness – Focus Ireland Urges Government to Reform Housing Policy

The Department of Housing reports that 11,397 people are currently living in emergency accommodation, and 3,480 of these are children, a record high. Focus Ireland has urged the government to intervene by effectively allocating housing to the most vulnerable.

Emergency accommodation is official housing for people that are homeless, such as converted hotels. Conor Culkin, a communications officer for Focus Ireland, describes these settings as “confined” and “difficult”.

Culkin highlights that the actual levels of homelessness are far grimmer, as the reports released by the Department of Housing neglected the “hidden homeless”.

These include individuals with no fixed accommodation such as “couch surfers”, people in the direct provision system, and “rough sleepers” that take shelter in tents or sleep on the street.

Culkin admits that gathering representative statistics of the actual level of homelessness is difficult but stresses the importance of satisfying the EU standards of gathering this data.

“What’s most important is that every single one of these people that is homeless is a human being, an individual”, says Culkin.

Focus Ireland has identified the housing crisis as one of the biggest issues contributing to homelessness. The amount of housing being made available is inadequate.

Culkin said, “The number of landlords selling up is very high, and there are not enough homes being built”.

“We also have a problem with dereliction and vacancy. There are a lot of vacant homes out there that could be turned into accommodation.”

The above-mentioned obstacles are making it very difficult for Focus Ireland to achieve their goals of preventing homelessness and moving individuals out of homelessness.

Focus Ireland welcomes the ‘no fault eviction policy’ which was implemented this month to reduce the levels of homelessness. However, Pat Dennigan, CEO of Focus Ireland, highlights that it is not an effective long-term measure.

He said, “it only provides a breathing space which must be used to address the fact that nowhere near enough new homes are being built.”

“If supply is not ramped up in the months ahead, the numbers homeless will shoot up once again once the eviction ban ends”.

Focus Ireland has identified short comings in the allocation of emergency accommodation.

Dennigan said, “In 2016, when we built or acquired 5,700 new social homes, this provided homes for 1,400 households moving out of homelessness.”

“Last year, when we were able to deliver over 9,000 new social homes – the same number of homeless households benefited – even though there were more homeless people.”

Focus Ireland believes government must take urgent measures to ensure that the most vulnerable are prioritized when emergency accommodation is allocated for the Winter Emergency Period.

They recommend government engagement with all small landlords, who have issued eviction notices due to their withdrawal from the market, to identify the causes and formulate necessary strategies to counter this.

They also recommend effective measures to repurpose vacant and derelict homes for habitation, including penalties for those who cannot justify the property’s vacancy.

Homelessness is not an inevitability, says Dennigan, “It is not a natural phenomenon, it is the result of bad policies and can be ended, over time, with better policies delivered with urgency.”

To read another article about Focus Ireland.