Family homelessness has reached a new crisis point in Dublin.
71 homeless families were referred to our family homeless team last month, the highest number on record.
What's worse is that this figure does not reflect the full scale of the problem as many families who have been assessed as homeless have been refused emergency accommodation by hard pressed local authorities as it is all full.
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71 homeless families were referred to our family homeless team last month, the highest number on record.
What's worse is that this figure does not reflect the full scale of the problem as many families who have been assessed as homeless have been refused emergency accommodation by hard pressed local authorities as it is all full.
...
Some of these families have been left to sleeping rough due to the shortage of emergency accommodation for families.
We are calling on Minister Alan Kelly to issue an urgent ministerial directive to instruct local authorities that any family that is homeless MUST be provided with suitable emergency accommodation and no homeless family should be turned away leaving them on the streets.
The Government’s continued refusal to raise rent supplement - and deliver of its promises on Rent Certainty - is directly forcing more families to become homeless.
Without this Ministerial order and the resources to make it effective, it is simply a matter of time before we start to see young children and their parents sleeping on our streets. The risk that these children will be under is unthinkable in a country which, we are told, is in the middle of an economic recovery.”
We know that local authority staff are under extreme pressure and we are not trying to point the finger of blame but we must provide a voice for these families who are homeless.
It is totally unacceptable that 71 families became homeless last month, and that countless more were turned away with no place to sleep. We have warned the Government time and time again that without urgent action to increase Rent Supplement levels to match real market rents the homeless and housing crisis will continue to deepen. Sadly this is exactly what is happening in Dublin and this problem is now also rearing its head in cities including Cork and Galway.
There are some prevention measures in place which have helped some families and it’s right to highlight these successes. Since June last year, the Government has intervened to save the tenancies of over 480 families by increasing rent supplement on a case by case level. However, during the same period around the same number of families lost their homes due to government inaction on rents. This failure has resulted in more than 1,000 children being homeless with their families.
Up until the last three years, family homelessness was relatively limited in Ireland and was mostly associated with a range of other complex social problems. In the last three years, we have seen the problem escalate and start to impact on families whose primary problem is that they simply cannot afford to pay the escalating rents.
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We are calling on Minister Alan Kelly to issue an urgent ministerial directive to instruct local authorities that any family that is homeless MUST be provided with suitable emergency accommodation and no homeless family should be turned away leaving them on the streets.
The Government’s continued refusal to raise rent supplement - and deliver of its promises on Rent Certainty - is directly forcing more families to become homeless.
Without this Ministerial order and the resources to make it effective, it is simply a matter of time before we start to see young children and their parents sleeping on our streets. The risk that these children will be under is unthinkable in a country which, we are told, is in the middle of an economic recovery.”
We know that local authority staff are under extreme pressure and we are not trying to point the finger of blame but we must provide a voice for these families who are homeless.
It is totally unacceptable that 71 families became homeless last month, and that countless more were turned away with no place to sleep. We have warned the Government time and time again that without urgent action to increase Rent Supplement levels to match real market rents the homeless and housing crisis will continue to deepen. Sadly this is exactly what is happening in Dublin and this problem is now also rearing its head in cities including Cork and Galway.
There are some prevention measures in place which have helped some families and it’s right to highlight these successes. Since June last year, the Government has intervened to save the tenancies of over 480 families by increasing rent supplement on a case by case level. However, during the same period around the same number of families lost their homes due to government inaction on rents. This failure has resulted in more than 1,000 children being homeless with their families.
Up until the last three years, family homelessness was relatively limited in Ireland and was mostly associated with a range of other complex social problems. In the last three years, we have seen the problem escalate and start to impact on families whose primary problem is that they simply cannot afford to pay the escalating rents.
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