The Government should reverse its decision to allow the eviction ban to lapse at the end of the month, the executive director of the Simon Communities of Ireland, Wayne Stanley has said.
“It's never too late to reverse a bad decision,” he told RTÉ Radio’s Morning Ireland, adding the Government’s arguments for lifting the ban “don’t hold water”.
“They said that it was landlords - some landlords were being made homeless. There have actually been fewer of those small number of cases where that was true, a carve out could have been put in place.
“And in fact, those landlords have been abandoned. They could have been supported. We could have worked with the landlord [and] the tenant and triaged those small numbers.”
Mr Stanley was commenting on the charity’s latest Locked Out of the Market report, which recorded the lowest number of properties available to rent through the Housing Assistant Payment (HAP) Scheme, with just 29 HAP rentals available over a three-day period last month.
It marks the lowest proportion of properties within HAP rates at 4.3 per cent in March this year, compared to 10.8 per cent in March 2022.
The report examines the experience of people who are on low incomes and dependent on the HAP scheme to access housing in the private rental market.
Route out of homelessness
There was a new dimension to homelessness, Mr Stanley said, explaining working people are now becoming homeless and finding themselves locked out of the market.
“I've worked in homeless services since 2005, and up until two or three years ago, if somebody was able to get into employment, that was an almost immediate route out of homelessness.
“The primary route out of homelessness has for a long time been the private rental market and utilising payments like the housing assistance payment hub that we had that we referred to in this report.”
He added single people are the ones struggling the most with homelessness.
Mr Stanley pointed out that over the eight years of the Locked Out report, the remit had been expanded: “Initially, what we were doing, we were just looking at the basic rate of HAP, and for two out of the last three reports there has been no properties available at the basic rate of HAP.
“We then started looking at discretion and local authorities started using discretion more liberally. We started looking at what was available when the local authorities used that discretion up to the maximum rate, and we saw obviously an increase in the number of properties that were then available or accessible to people on a payment that has gradually been falling away.
“Last year at this time it was 80 properties and in this report is the lowest total ever was 29.”
Mr Stanley said homelessness is a “national crisis”, adding that Simon Communities around the country are experiencing a “significant increase” in the number of people presenting to their services.
“We would encourage people as soon as they start feeling under any pressure to start reaching out to the supports that are there.
“We are about finding solutions for people. We do know that given time and resources, we can get people out of homelessness,” he said.
