“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.”
Oppressive rules mean homeless families placed in The Bonnington hotel face a hostile environment, according to people who’ve been through it. Their complaints have fallen on deaf ears, they say.
“This isn’t just about homelessness,” says Alice Leahy. “This is much broader than that. It is as if we have become so informed that we are forgetting about the basics.”
This month’s cover is a pastiche of the “Doors of Dublin” poster and postcard, substituting its polished Georgian doors with doors to vacant buildings and makeshift homes.
They talked about needing to look afresh at the freephone system, reducing reliance on night-time-only hostel beds, and providing more daytime services.
The ACCES team, which provides care to homeless people with severe mental illness, stopped taking referrals in July last year. It’s not clear whether it’s started again.
Many homeless people struggle to navigate the baffling bureaucracy that stands between them and adequate shelter. Sometimes, because bureaucrats say they aren’t homeless.
People who stay in the “hubs” meant for homeless families aren’t tenants, so they don’t have the same protections as people in the private rental sector under the Residential Tenancies Board (RTB).
