There has been an 85% increase in homelessness in the North West since May 2022, new figures have revealed. Child homelessness has increased by 26% in that timeframe, leading the Simon Community to describe the statistics as “truly appalling”.
Speaking on Highland Radio on Monday, CEO of the North West Simon Community, Noel Daly, said that the numbers of homeless in the region are continuing to see an increase.
Mr Daly told the Nine till Noon Show that the figures were very specific to emergency accommodation, with many people who are effectively homeless in the region not actually included in the published figures, which encompass counties Cavan, Donegal, Leitrim, Monaghan, and Sligo.
“This is the highest number of individuals ever recorded to be homeless in the North West, and it’s also the highest number of children ever recorded,” Mr Daly told the programme.
He said the figures related to people who are approved for emergency accommodation by the local authorities. Those not recorded in the figures include anyone staying with family or friends.
“People who aren’t included in that would be anybody staying with family or friends,” Mr Daly explained. “The last social housing assessment carried out in November ‘22 identified just under 800 households in that situation.
“Then there may be people sleeping in cars, and vans and caravans, or who may be sleeping rough. They’re not included, and also not included is any family in domestic violence.”
Asked what factors he thought lay behind the surge, Mr Daly said it was hard to ascertain.
He said that it was hard to prove cause and effect, but that “undoubtedly, we’ve had a significant rise in households” who have had to grapple with the impact of no-fault evictions.
“Local authorities in the region have done all they can in the last couple of months to advise people who had no-fault evictions coming online that they would get transferred to housing, but there’s a limit to what they have available. And there are limited resources,” Mr Daly added.
“People may be homeless for reasons other than an acute need for housing. Sometimes the problems may be related to family circumstances outside of housing. Not everybody is eligible for emergency accommodation,” he explained.
“We work with people, many of them don’t meet the criteria that the local authority has to use to allocate the accommodation, and if they don’t qualify under that criteria, they don’t meet it at all.”
He continued by telling the programme that homelessness is “about much more than housing”.
“I think one of the challenges that we have is that the housing authorities are being asked to deal with situations that they’re not equipped to deal with – people who are in crisis with mental health; people who are in family crisis, for example. Many don’t fit into the criteria that local authority has to fulfil.”
Mr Daly said that the principles of what have to be done to tackle the problem are “well established” and are contained within the government’s national strategy for Housing for All, and also in the Local Action Plan published in January.
He said the principles include involving Tusla more in the crisis.
“As the child and family agency, you would expect that every child that goes into homeless services is the subject of review by Tusla, but they simply don’t see themselves as having a function in that area,” he said.
He said that if the family unit is deemed secure, then the child is not deemed to be at risk.
“And Tusla, again, don’t have the resources,” he added. “We’re stretched in every way.”
“I think everybody agrees that the solution to homelessness is a house,” he continued. He said that while most of the time, people assume this means a new house, “it doesn’t have to be”.
“A lot of the time, it can be about helping the family to keep the house that they have, or the individual to keep the house that they have.”
He said that it must be recognised that if someone is experiencing trauma, “very often” that person does not manage essential aspects of their lives, with things like rent payments being dropped.
He said that landlords work hard to try and accommodate such tenants who are having difficulties, but they need support.
“We have this anomaly that anybody who is on the homeless assistance payment, they make an individual contribution to the rent, and that goes to the HAP office in Limerick, and then they may also be topping up the rent with the landlord over and above the money that is paid through the HAP (housing assistance payment) system.
“But if the tenant drops their contribution to HAP, which may seem the least important payment, HAP doesn’t tell the landlord that their payment isn’t being maintained, and suddenly, the landlord gets a notification that the tenant hasn’t paid the contribution for three months,” he said.
“It escalates – and the landlord has had no notice at all,” he said.
Speaking about a “disconnect” on the homelessness issue, Mr Daly said he believed this was “purposeful”.
“Homeless services are managed by the housing authority […] but the authorities are not being equipped to respond to homelessness as a national emergency.
“It’s being dealt with as a housing issue. If you take the 170 people that were homeless last month, that equates to just under 10% of the people who are on the social housing needs list in the North West.”
He said proposed approaches to house people in hotels in places like Bundoran was not a solution to the crisis.
Mr Daly said at present, he doubted that there would be a hotel in the area which would have space.
“I think it needs to be more complex than that, because you can’t just lump everybody into one facility. There is a need for increased emergency accommodation and increased support to get people out of homelessness.
“At the moment, the local authorities have one staff member employed by North West Simon in Donegal, working with settlement and tenancy sustainment, and [she is working with about 20 cases at the moment.”
He said that the majority of people who are provided with emergency accommodation will unfortunately not get the immediate support to solve issues that brought them into the situation of homelessness in the first place, and to get them out of such accommodation.
He added that a priority should be getting into contact with people early on to identify the problems which brought them into emergency accommodation.
In May, the Simon Community said that the pattern of reaching new homeless records must come to an end, as it expressed deep concern at rising numbers. In April, the number of people homeless in Ireland surpassed 12,000 for the first time since records began. That figure represented a 22% increase (2210 people) on the previous year.
The latest Department of Housing Figures showed there were 12,441 people in emergency accommodation in Ireland last month, which included 3,699 children.