Child homelessness no longer shocks, says Fr Peter McVerry

Constantly increasing the supply of emergency accommodation for homeless people will not solve the housing crisis, while a lack of public investment in housing is “very frustrating”, says homelessness charity the Peter McVerry Trust.

Publishing its 2016 annual report on Monday, the organisation says it has increased its bed capacity 28-fold since 2007.

Founder of the trust, Fr Peter McVerry, said 2016 had been "the most difficult and challenging year" in the 33-year history of the organisation.

“I dread to think what our annual report for 2017 will have to say . . . We have lost our sense of outrage. In the first half of 2015 the number of homeless children passed the 1,000 mark and there was a public outcry. The media was inundated with calls for the Government to act and the Government promised to take action.”

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Since then, he says, the shock at child homelessness had waned, and media reports on the ever-increasing numbers provoked less outrage.

Under the Housing First model, chronic rough sleepers are placed straight into housing, with a wrap-around of services

“Thousands of homeless children has become the norm and no longer shocks.”

Housing First

The Trust, in a statement with its annual report, said: "This winter we have been asked, and have committed, to put in place additional emergency capacity in the absence of alternative housing solutions. This is very frustrating because we know that emergency accommodation is more expensive and less effective than other models such as Housing First. Yet Housing First receives less than 1 per cent of the national homeless budget each year in Ireland. "

Under the Housing First model, chronic rough sleepers are placed straight into housing, with a wrap-around of services, including addiction treatment, psychiatric services and assistance with such areas as budgeting and running a home. It contrasts with the more traditional “staircase” approach in which a rough sleeper goes through a staircase model of various hostels before being deemed “ready” for housing. Housing First has housed over 100 formerly homeless people since 2015, and 95 per cent of these have sustained their tenancies.

The Government’s strategy on the crisis, Rebuilding Ireland, published in July 2016, commits Government to providing funding for a total of 300 Housing First tenancies.

Funding policy shift

According to the charity, there is a stipulation in other countries that up to 50 per cent of the homeless services budget must be invested in the Housing First model. It calls on Government to “make a funding policy shift” in favour of the Housing First approach.

"Then the next thing we need is housing to come on-stream to actually deliver a Housing First approach," said the Trust's chief executive, Pat Doyle. "We have said to Government all along that the solution has to be a housing-led one, yet we find ourselves constantly being asked to deliver greater levels of emergency accommodation."

The Trust, founded in 1983, supported 4,548 people across its services in 2016, of whom the average age was 32. Its bed capacity increased to 762 last year. The charity has 210 properties, including offices, hostels and housing, and had an operational budget last year of more than €17 million.

Mr Doyle said the Government needed to demonstrate to people in homelessness that it was doing all it could to meet their housing needs as well as taking every possible step to prevent further unnecessary cases of homelessness.

The latest figures from the Department of Housing show there were 8,374 people, including 3,124 children, in emergency accommodation in September this year.