The Government is to embark on an apartment-building scheme for homeless people as part of a drive to reduce expenditure on temporary accommodation and rent allowances.
Local authorities in Dublin and other urban areas are expected later this year to enter into public-private partnerships with developers who will build and operate the accommodation units.
The apartments will be aimed at homeless families who are staying in B&Bs for long periods of time, and single people on housing waiting lists who have little chance of securing local authority homes.
The move has been prompted partly by concern over the spiralling cost of accommodating homeless people in B&Bs and the level of resources used in providing rent allowance to people on housing waiting lists.
The State spent around €20 million on B&Bs and other temporary accommodation last year, while rent subsidies cost a further €252 million.
The Minister for Housing and Urban Renewal, Mr Noel Ahern, told The Irish Times that the initiative would help the State get better value for money. He also said there was evidence to suggest that the B&B scheme was being abused by a small number of individuals who had left housing waiting lists and claimed homelessness to speed things up.
"I'm not convinced we're getting great value for money at the moment, especially where people are being accommodated in B&Bs for long periods of time. The aim is to promote the supply of good standard accommodation and get better value for State expenditure currently incurred on social welfare rent supplements," he said.
The increase in the cost of temporary accommodation and rent subsidies has been fuelled by a rise in the number of homeless and acute shortages of suitable accommodation.
Homeless people are now staying in B&Bs for an average length of 18 months, compared to three months in 1999. The cost of rent allowance has also increased dramatically in recent years and prompted the Government to place a cap on the supplement it pays to people on low incomes.
The director of the housing charity Threshold, Mr Patrick Burke, welcomed the apartment-building initiative and said the focus on the needs of single people on local authority housing waiting lists was urgent.
"At the moment, single people on the waiting-list haven't a hope of getting a house. Now that there's a cap on the rent allowance, it's not enough to even pay the rent and people are paying over and above the allowance."
The Government initiative will begin as a pilot project in several local authority areas and, if successful, will be expanded to other parts of the country.
The move will help deflect criticism from homeless support groups who say the Government has focused on providing affordable housing for people on low and middle incomes and ignored the needs of those at the bottom of the housing ladder. It is expected, for example, that the 10,000 affordable houses promised under the social partnership agreement will be directed at households with an income of around €32,000. Many on the local authority waiting lists have incomes below €16,000.
While funding details have yet to be worked out, the public-private partnership scheme could be funded by National Housing Agency and savings made as a result of cuts in demand for rent allowance and B&B accommodation.
