“That is madness,” says Louisa Santoro, CEO of the Mendicity Institution. “A single person is not a sufficient level of staff to run any homeless service.”
“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.
In cities such as Belfast and Glasgow, only a small number of beds for homeless people are night-time-only. Can, and should, we move away from them here?
At meetings this week, councillors discussed where exactly “family hubs” for homeless families will be, and settled on social and affordable housing figures for Poolbeg West.
Minister Simon Coveney promised to end the use of hotels to shelter homeless families by 1 July. To some, a big part of his plan sounds like rebranding, rather than real change.
There were no beds available for women in homeless hostels on 15 February, according to Dublin Regional Homeless Executive. And some say it wasn’t a one-night problem.
Rough sleepers and people living in emergency accommodation are counted as homeless. But couch-surfers, squatters, car-sleepers and many others are left out of the statistics.
But did the government push Apollo House residents to the front of the queue? A look at Dublin’s two-tiered system of emergency accommodation for homeless people.
Some called such sprinklers a “disgrace”, but the shop’s staff say after years of finding faeces and needles, “our priority is the well-being and safety of our staff”.
