Cost of accommodating homeless families spirals

The cost of accommodating homeless families with children outside Dublin has increased by up to 75 times since January, figures obtained by The Irish Times indicate.

The biggest increase has been in Galway city, where the council spent €335.35 on emergency accommodation for families in January this year and last month spent €25,767 – an increase of more than 7,500 per cent.

Though the number of children in emergency accommodation with their families in the city increased by 86 per cent in the period, from 14 in seven families in January, to 26 in eight families last month, families are not moving out of homelessness.

The increase in costs is explained, according to a spokesman for Galway City Council, partly because of the almost doubling of numbers needing accommodation, but also because families are getting stuck in homelessness.

“Where families used to spend a few days or a week in emergency accommodation, now they are staying stuck. They cannot find rented accommodation. Landlords are leaving the RAS scheme and turning away rent supplement tenants, while banks are repossessing houses and apartments and don’t want the tenants.”

There has also been an increase in the cost of hotel rooms during the tourist season.

Pressure on budgets

Data published by the Department of the Environment last weekend showed the number of children becoming homeless outside the capital is increasing at almost three times the rate in Dublin, and as the numbers spiral upwards, pressure on local authority budgets is intensifying.

While Dublin saw its homeless children population increase by 44 per cent in the six months to June – from 780 in 359 families to 1,122 in 531 families, the numbers have gone up by 130 per cent outside Dublin.

Some 196 children in 89 families were in emergency accommodation outside Dublin last month, compared with 96 in 42 families in January.

In Cork city, the number of children in emergency accommodation has more than doubled since June 2014, from 22 in 10 families to 45 in 18 families last June.

Homeless families in Cork are mainly accommodated in Edel House, a facility for women and children operated by the Good Shepherd Services.

Bed and breakfast

However, as the crisis deepens,

Cork City Council

is increasingly also using bed and breakfast accommodation. This cost has increased from €1,267 in July last year, to €14,201 last month – a 1,020 per cent increase.

In Kildare the number of homeless children increased from six from two families in July last year to 12 children in eight families last month.

The spend there on family emergency accommodation has increased from €2,175 in July 2014, to €18,570 last month. In March this year Kildare County Council spent €23,610 on emergency accommodation for families.

In Wicklow, where the number of homeless children has increased from three in June last year to 15 in June this year, the spend has gone up from €4,740 to €12,015 in the same period.

Limerick city was unable to provide figures specific to it, as it collates figures for counties Limerick and Clare as well, for the Mid West region count.

The number of children in emergency accommodation in the region increased from 20 in 10 families in January to 32 in 18 families last month.