Homeless charity Focus Ireland is calling on the government to adopt a policy that dedicates a portion of the new social housing supply to long-term homeless families.
The call comes as the charity launched its annual report on Tuesday which highlighted a 12.5 per cent increase in the number of people it supported in 2023.
A strategy of dedicating a portion of new social housing to long term homeless families had been instrumental in significantly reducing homelessness during the pandemic, chief executive Pat Dennigan told RTÉ radio’s Morning Ireland
In advance of Budget 2025 and with the prospect of a general election, Focus Ireland urged that more accommodation become available for those on the emergency accommodation protocol.
The Focus Ireland report showed that it supported 18,000 people in 2023, compared to 16,000 in 2022.
The report also showed Focus Ireland helped 1,757 households to either keep their home (657 households) or support their exit from homelessness (1,100) households), an increase of nearly ten percent on the previous year (1,598).
The number seeking assistance has been increasing month over month for the last few years, and it is “far too high” said Mr Dennigan.
“One of the frustrations that we encounter all the time is that when we start to talk about homelessness as a particular issue, the answer we get is about housing.
" While they are connected and very closely interlinked, they're not the same issue. And you need to look at homelessness in a much more holistic way. You need a home, you need a base to work from, but you also need the support to keep that home for the future.”
Mr Dennigan said Focus Ireland was “starting to see chinks of light” around increased social housing becoming available. “It's long overdue. And there's much more momentum that needs to be built.
“Our Family Homeless Action team based in Dublin have moved more people from and more households from emergency accommodation this year in the first six months.”
Mr Dennigan said that while that momentum was welcome, there was a need for more one-bedded accommodation and also more family accommodation.
“Because there's a real danger that both single people who need one bed accommodation and our larger families get left behind in emergency accommodation.”
A policy that dedicates a portion of the new social housing supply to long-term homeless families made more sense, he added.
“If you have an accident, and you go to your emergency department, your treatment is based on your level of need. And we don't see that in housing at the moment.
"We'd like to have a part of the fabric of the allocation of homes. And we're asking for something off the order of 10 percent or 20 percent of the social housing that becomes available to be dedicated, while we have this crisis, to people who are homeless.
“What we've been proposing is that the people who are homeless for a period of time, maybe 18 months or two years, get prioritised for social housing.
"We don't believe that people would declare themselves homeless for that period of time simply to get a jump on the list, shall we say. But at the moment we believe that the system is very unfair and very unfair to people who are homeless and also causing significant trauma and having long term effects on their wellbeing.”
Mr Dennigan said it was vital to emphasise that homelessness was not inevitable, it was possible to end homelessness with the right policies. To this end, Focus Ireland remained committed to its overall objective of ending homelessness in Ireland through prevention and sustained exits.
