New barriers for some people to access homeless accommodation set to take effect in coming months

Homeless charities, human rights groups and legal advocacy organisations continue to flag concerns about new legislation to restrict who can access homeless accommodation.

The Housing and Residential Tenancies Act 2026 restricts access to homeless accommodation to households where the council is satisfied all members are not only lawfully, but also habitually resident in Ireland. 

This is a significant shift for some categories of immigrants and could also affect Irish citizens returning from abroad. 

Paul Dornan, managing solicitor at Mercy Law Resource Centre, says the new legislation introduces a residency requirement for access to homeless accommodation for the first time. 

Going forward, EU residents, including Irish citizens, must demonstrate that they are habitually resident in Ireland.

People living here from outside the EU (who do not have refugee status) must demonstrate that they have lived here for five of the last eight years or that they have leave to remain to bridge that gap.

That is a change from the current system for emergency accommodation, which is currently implemented with “a degree of humanitarian spirit built into it”, says Dornan. 

Martin Collins, director of Pavee Point, says that marginalised groups – including Travellers and Roma people, as well as women fleeing domestic violence – could be disproportionately impacted by the changes. 

But Sinn Féin TD and housing spokesperson Eoin Ó Broin says he doesn’t think many people will be affected because most immigrants living here will meet the habitual residence condition.

The barriers that some people face to accessing homeless accommodation will still exist after the new legislation is enacted, he says. “There is a mad situation where people who are in real crisis are being asked for a high level of proof,” he says. 

The new legislation doesn’t fix those problems, but probably doesn’t make them worse either, says Ó Broin.

The change was mooted three years ago, and the legislation was passed in July and is set to be commenced in the coming months. 

Experts say they are worried about the impact and are awaiting detailed guidance on how the rules will work in practice, for which homeless charities are set to be consulted. 

A spokesperson for the Department of Housing says: "The homelessness-related provisions in the 2026 Act will strengthen the statutory framework within which housing authorities support households experiencing, or at risk of homelessness."

Why the change?

A Department of Housing consultation document from 2023 says they planned to “introduce eligibility criteria, in line with amendments to the social housing legislation, requiring lawful and habitual residency as conditions for access to section 10 funded emergency accommodation”.

But lawful residency is already a precondition to joining the social housing list.

Dornan says there has been departmental guidance since 2012 that required people to have a long-term right to remain and a link with Ireland for social housing eligibility. 

Councils usually only accept social housing applications from people already living in their local authority area (normally resident) or those who have a "local connection", for example, they work in or are in full-time education in the local authority area. 

Councils have been criticised in the past for turning people away while beds were available, citing the social housing eligibility rule, the local connection, as a barrier to people accessing homeless services. 

In 2021, the Dublin Region Homeless Executive backed down and offered a man who was sleeping rough a bed after he featured in an RTÉ Investigates programme. 

Mike Allen, director of advocacy at Focus Ireland, says he doesn’t understand the point of the new legislation, which he says doesn’t improve aspects of the system that do need fixing. 

What is habitual residence?

The habitual residence condition is separate from the local connection. 

The habitual residence condition tests the strength of the person’s ties to Ireland, where they have been living previously and whether they intend to stay in Ireland for the foreseeable future 

Previously, it was used to determine whether someone was eligible for social protection, according to a briefing document by the Free Legal Advice Centre. 

The new legislation extends that to social housing and homeless services and Allen, of Focus Ireland, says the habitual residence condition is a complex legal issue, which can be interpreted in different ways.

Council staff are not legal experts, says Allen. “It's a very tricky rule,” he says. “It's constantly being over-simplified by people who don’t understand it.”

“Social housing is the sort of thing that a complex regulation like HRC [the habitual residence condition] can reasonably apply to,” Allen wrote in an opinion piece in July. “But access to emergency shelter is different.”

He fears more people could end up sleeping on the streets as a result of the new rules, he said on Wednesday. 

The new residence requirement requires the same kind of documents that a social housing applicant would previously have needed to satisfy the local connection, says Ó Broin, the Sinn Féin TD.

“The way they have designed the HRC, it's really just the local connection test, but state-wide,” says Ó Broin. “If I pass the local connection test, I’ll pass the habitual residency.”

“This makes it no better or worse for the overwhelming majority of cases,” he says. But he says he voted against the legislation because it doesn't provide for a robust appeals process.

But Dornan, a solicitor at Mercy Law, says that under the old rules council staff had the discretion to provide emergency accommodation to people who were lawfully resident but who may not have met the residency criteria for social housing.

“Now you are putting in this residency requirement as a precondition,” he says. 

Going forward, each member of the household needs to be able to prove that they are habitually resident in Ireland to access homeless supports, which is new, he says.

So who will be affected?

Allen of Focus Ireland says he can envisage situations arising where lots of different people are affected by the new rules, basically anyone that doesn't have all their paperwork in order and on them.

This could include people fleeing domestic violence, leaving urgently due to eviction or experiencing a crisis of mental health. "The inevitable consequence of this legislation is that people in crisis will be denied emergency shelter and be forced to sleep on the street," he says.

When asked whether some people might not have all their paperwork on them when they present as homeless, a spokesperson for the Department of Housing said: "As is currently the case, the onus will be on the person presenting as homeless to ensure they present with all relevant supporting documentation."

How many people currently living in homeless accommodation have a diagnosed mental illness, and are those people more likely to struggle to provide the required documentation?

"Information in relation to the health status of homeless individuals is a matter for the Department of Health and HSE," said the spokesperson for the Department of Housing. "As is currently the case, local authorities will be in a position to deal appropriately, at their discretion, with vulnerable persons who present as homeless."

Allen says he remains concerned but is waiting to see the new guidance for council staff. He says that homeless charities will be contributing feedback to that process. 

The changes could impact vulnerable applicants, says Dornan, of Mercy Law, who are more likely not to have all their paperwork in order, or any person who has to leave their home suddenly for any reason. 

"Our reading of the act is if you don’t meet the residency requirements then you won’t be provided with mainstream homelessness supports,” he says.

The council "may" provide the person one-night-only accommodation from 8pm to 8am the next morning in those circumstances.

“My own very honest assessment, having spent a long time in the committee, talking to officials, is that there isn’t really a change,” says Ó Broin, referring to the Oireachtas Joint Committee on Housing, Local Government and Heritage.

Most of those who can currently get into homeless accommodation will still be able to do so, he says. 

The two groups who could be affected by the changes, in his view, are Irish people returning home after many years abroad, he says, and EU nationals who try to claim homeless accommodation soon after arriving in Ireland. 

“The purpose is to stop people coming to Ireland with the explicit intention of claiming emergency accommodation on day one, but not excluding somebody who might come to take up a job and a month and a half in something goes wrong,” he says. 

Martin Collins of Pavee Point said he thinks Irish Travellers returning from abroad will be affected by the change, as will Roma people, which is a worry.

In 2016, the European Committee of Social Rights found that the Irish state is already in breach of Travellers' human rights in terms of accommodation. 

“Many Traveller sites are in an inadequate condition, there is insufficient provision of accommodation for Travellers, Irish law provides inadequate safeguards for Travellers threatened with eviction, and evictions are carried out in practice without necessary safeguards,” says a Pavee Point press statement. 

The Journal reported in 2022 that Travellers were being refused access to homeless accommodation based on the local connection.