by Mannix Flynn The root cause of the homelessness crisis in Ireland is the broken housing system. Ireland does not have a public housing system to meet the needs of the society. The biggest mistake was the decision by Labour’s Joan Burton to cut social housing spending by 72% between 2008 and 2012 (€1.38bn to €390m), but Rent Supplement levels, rising rents, easy evictions and reduced welfare rates for under-25s all represent serious policy failures. It is four years since the Fine Gael government introduced ‘Rebuilding Ireland’, their insincere and uninformed strategy to reduce homelessness. Nearly every single month for that period the number of homeless people has gone up. Even though there are over 180,000 vacant dwellings – excluding hoilday homes – in Ireland, there are now around 9000 homeless people across Ireland. The number of homeless families has increased 115% in the last five years of economic ascendancy. More than one in three people in emergency accommodation is a child. However, this number does not include ‘hidden homelessness’ – women and children staying in domestic violence refuges or people who are sleeping rough. In November 2019, the official rough sleeping count confirmed 92 people sleeping rough in Dublin, with an additional number in the Night Café, without a place to sleep. Accountancy firm Mazars found there were more than 75 housing and homelessness service-providers in Ireland. In 2019, a total of €170 million was spent providing temporary and emergency accommodation for the homeless, an increase of 19 per cent over 2018. The numbers of homeless accommodated in hotels and B&Bs increased by 15.6 per cent from 2,282 in January 2019 to 2,638 in December 2019. €80.16 million was paid to hotels and B&Bs; €70.26, an increase of 16% over 2018, was paid to homelessness charities for temporary and emergency accommodation, including family hubs; €19.9 million was paid to ‘other’. Hotels received payments totalling €56.6 million to provide temporary and emergency accommodation. 19 Dublin hotels each received payments in excess of €1 million. One hotel received payments of €4 million-€5 million There are nearly 3000 homeless adults in private temporary or emergency accommodation in Dublin – which is more than in charity-run facilities, according to the Department of Housing. Fr Peter McVerry, the anti-homelessness campaigner, recently told the Dublin Inquirer he was surprised by that distribution. In Glasgow most homeless people have their own rooms yet, apart from the Iveagh Trust, most homeless hostels for single people in Dublin accommodate people in shared rooms or dorms. The conditions in most of Dublin’s temporary and emergency accommodation and hostels are simply appalling. They are ghettos staffed by untrained individuals with no real understanding of the homeless and the traumas they’ve been through, acting ad hoc. Of the respondents to a 2018 Dublin Inquirer/Amárach survey of homelessness-hostel users, 61 percent said noise levels and privacy were “poor”, and 40 percent said cleanliness was “poor”. Of the 126 people surveyed, over 90 percent said they had witnessed drinking or drug-taking at one-night-only hostels, and 89 percent said they had experienced bullying or intimidation. 38 percent of those surveyed said staying in one-night-only hostels had a “very negative” impact on their physical health, and 41 percent a “very negative” impact on their mental health. Survey respondents used hostels run by Depaul, Peter McVerry Trust and Iveagh Trust most frequently. The Depaul hostel on Little Britain Street was rated highest, and Peter McVerry Trust’s emergency accommodation was ranked lowest. Although a captive media rarely gets beyond parroting the incoherent mantras of the middle-class worthies who front these pampered institutions, officials have admitted to me that they themselves are deeply disturbed with the appalling management of facilities that they were spending nearly €170m annually on, but which are not inspected or properly regulated and the rights of whose users remain unclear. I remember one incident where an untrained staff member gave a homeless client the wrong medication which resulted in a complete breakdown of the individual and the person being sectioned by the Garda who had to be called in to restrain the individual who had such a bad reaction to the wrong medication. But none of this is recorded and nothing is ever done about it. Until recently charities that ran hostels would say that they have their own standards in place. But it was never clear whose role it was to ensure these standards were high enough, and adhered to. Neither Peter McVerry Trust nor Cedar House Crosscare Homeless Shelter responded to queries about quality-control in hostels. These queries included what oversight is in place to monitor standards, how many times their hostels had been inspected in 2018, whether they gathered feedback from their users, and what measures were in place for addressing complaints. Depaul and Focus Ireland did respond to the queries. A spokesperson for Depaul referred to the DRHE’s National Quality Standards Framework. Focus Ireland adopted a full set of “standards of customer services” around 2008 according to Mike Allen, director of advocacy. It carries out “detailed customer-satisfaction surveys” every three years, he said. For “customers who have disengaged with our services”, the charity calls them six months later, asking questions including about quality of service. Some of those surveyed also mentioned the Iveagh Trust hostel, even though it isn’t a one-night-only hostel. Peter Fitzpatrick, a spokesperson for Iveagh Trust, told the Dublin Inquirer the Iveagh Hostel differs from other hostels in Dublin because all residents have their own individual room and are free to stay for as long as they choose. Having single rooms “affords a level of privacy and significantly reduces the potential for issues to arise between residents”, said Fitzpatrick. This is key to the future of homelessness services. If you provide decent facilities you get better results for users, local authorities and the public. The Dublin Regional Homeless Executive (DHRE) is provided by Dublin City Council as the lead statutory local authority in the response to homelessness in Dublin. It was set up to provide accommodation and support for those falling into homelessness. DHRE is an ambulance without wheels. It
