It has issued a tender for a feasibility study. The documents include few details, but they do confirm the likely future uses for the historic building.
This would be a move towards decentralisation of government services for homeless people in the city, which some people say would make their lives better.
The squeeze in the private-rental sector means that those who run the programme for rough-sleepers must rely on social housing. Which isn’t always easy.
Some say they’d gladly move into a hostel if they could get a decent one, where couples could stay together, where recovering addicts don’t have to bunk with users, where they wouldn’t just get kicked out each day and have to start all over again.
In July this year, Waterways Ireland raised the water level to prevent people from sleeping or doing drugs under Binns Bridge, where Dorset Street crosses the Royal Canal.
At meetings this week, Dublin city councillors tried to arrange a screening at Smithfield of the All-Ireland football final, talked about plans for George Bernard Shaw’s birthplace, and more.
Several homeless Dubliners have pitched up in tents along the Royal Canal and say its safer than the alternatives. But they’ve been told they have to move on.
“Our research repeatedly shows that the largest single cause of family homelessness is landlords selling up and using loopholes in the law to evict families,” says Mike Allen of Focus Ireland.
“Sleeping bags are provided to clients as a humanitarian response when there is no accommodation available,” says the DRHE. But rough-sleepers say that doesn’t always happen.
