For more than a decade, and under the stewardship of six housing ministers from three parties, homelessness has climbed, seemingly inexorably.
The latest figures, published on Friday, represent another grim set of milestones.
They show the number of people in emergency accommodation in July surpassed 16,000 for the first time, including an unprecedented 11,044 adults, of whom 3,969 were caring for 5,014 children in 2,343 families.
It is the first time the number of homeless children has climbed above 5,000.
READ MORE
In July 2014, when current records began, there were 3,258 people in emergency accommodation, including 749 children.
So shocking did these figures seem that the then minister of state for housing, Jan O’Sullivan, described the escalation as an emergency crisis. “It’s going to get worse unless we do things,” she said.
She published an Implementation Plan on the State’s Response to Homelessness to December 2016, advocating apparently radical measures such as commandeering vacant Garda stations and former care homes, to quickly increase housing capacity.
Since then, ministers Alan Kelly, Simon Coveney, Eoghan Murphy, Darragh O’Brien, as well as further plans, have all come and gone, failing to get a grip on the problem.
Fianna Fáil’s James Browne took the baton in January and homelessness has since increased from 15,286 to 16,058.
Those working at the coalface insist these increases are not inevitable. “The crisis is 100 per cent solvable,” says Ber Grogan, executive director of the Simon Communities. “It has continued because of government choices that allow housing to be seen as a commodity, and allow profit to be prioritised over people.
“These policies do not care about the long-term impact of homelessness on children, adults and the over-65s who are being forced to experience trauma.”
She noted “huge profits being made from private emergency accommodation” in a context of spiralling private rents, house prices and land values, “which all line the pockets of some in our society”.
Key to addressing the housing needs of those in homelessness, she said, is “social housing built at scale”.
“Social housing is not profitable at the scale needed. Government has to lead on this. The figure of more than 5,000 children in homelessness has to be a wake-up call. It has to force a reset in approach.”
Echoing her comments, Focus Ireland chief executive Pat Dennigan says the “mantra of increasing supply” is “inadequate”. The type of supply needed greater attention, he says, also calling for a concerted focus on social and affordable housing – the only realistic option for those low-income families at greatest risk of inclusion in monthly homelessness statistics.
“There are about 54,000 households on Hap [the Housing Assistance Payment paid to private-sector landlords accommodating social housing tenants]. If even a quarter of those were taken out of the private rented market, housed in genuine social housing, they would be safe from homelessness and pressure on the private rental market would ease too.”
According to the Department of Housing, in the first nine months of last year, 2,119 new social homes were built, 1,296 were acquired and 850 leased through various programmes – a total of 4,265.
To stem the flow into homelessness immediately, there was an “urgent need” to review Hap rates, which have not been done since 2016, to “align payments with current market rents”, says Mr Dennigan.
Households dependent on Hap struggled to compete in the private rental sector and faced homelessness where rent increases went far beyond their Hap limit.
In addition, the “immediate refunding of the tenant-in-situ scheme to prevent more people from becoming homeless” is needed, he says.
