Agencies' help sought to solve crisis for homeless

Homelessness in the Dublin region is still at crisis point, the Minister of State for the Environment, Mr Noel Ahern, said yesterday.

Speaking at the publication in Dublin of the Counted In 2002, report on the number of homeless people in Dublin, Wicklow and Kildare - which found over 4,000 homeless people in the region - he also urged agencies working with the homeless to "tell us what you want" to solve the crisis.

The report, which comes three years after the Counted In 1999 report, found the number of homeless adults accessing emergency services to have increased by 300, from 1,350 to 1,650.

However, the overall number of homeless adults - those accessing services as well as those on a local authority housing waiting list - remained almost unchanged, having increased from 2,900 to 2,920. When the number of homeless children is added however, this figure rises to 4,060. The number of homeless children has risen from 990 in 1999 to 1,140 this year.

And while the number of homeless single people has fallen, from 2,050 to 1,780, the number of households with children has increased, from 540 to 640.

The report was compiled for the Dublin Homeless Agency by the ESRI and was based on surveys carried out over a one-week period in March this year. It counts people accessing emergency services, those on housing lists and rough sleepers.

The rough-sleeper count found an increase of 13 per cent in the number of people sleeping on the streets since 1999, from 275 to 312. A substantial rise in the use of B&Bs as emergency accommodation was also found. While 56 per cent of homeless households with children were placed in B&B accommodation in 1999 some 89 per cent are now.

Mr Greg Maxwell, director of Dublin Simon Community, said he was "fed up issuing public statements about the worsening homeless crisis in our capital".

He said it was "alarming" that despite the Government-funded Homeless Action Plan for the Dublin area, "the crisis continues unabated".

Ms Mary Higgins, director of the Homeless Agency, which was established in 2000 following the 1999 report, criticised recent reports on the homeless figures as "misleading".

"The impression communicated in the last week is that there is a huge increase in homelessness, that Dublin has more rough sleepers than London, that the Government strategy is not working and that voluntary organisations rely solely on public fund-raising to provide services."

She said there had been a decrease in the number of homeless single people, from 2050 in 1999 to 1,780 this year, and that the number of people sleeping rough in Dublin city centre had been found to be 79, as compared with 210 in London last July. The 2002 count was carried out "at a time when housing shortages in Dublin were acute and a significant increase in homelessness was anticipated", she said.

She also questioned the accuracy of local authority housing lists, pointing out that while the report, having had to rely on such lists, found 4,060 people homeless, there were only 2,300 emergency beds in the region.

"The figures do not add up," she said, questioning whether the 4,060 figure was in fact an overestimation.

Mr Declan Jones, CEO of Focus Ireland, however, said the real homelessness figures for Dublin were probably higher, "as there are always people who aren't included".

The housing charity, Threshold, said the social housing crisis was "at its worst level ever". At the publication of its annual report yesterday, the charity's chairperson, Ms Aideen Hayden, said the future for those on low incomes in the private rented sector was "bleak". She called on the Government to rescind its decision to reduce the level of rent allowance to those in the private rented sector.