Govt warned over housing shortage
Charity for the homeless Focus Ireland warned the Government today that it was failing to provide enough social housing despite a new €50m grant to tackle the crisis.
The money will be geared towards more long term solutions rather than putting up homeless people in emergency accommodation.
But Orla Barry, Focus Ireland director of services, said it was not enough and noted that over 43,000 households were still on local authority waiting lists.
“The reality is that we are still falling significantly short of the level of social housing development required,” she said.
“The latest figures show while total national housing output continues to grow, social housing output, 6,500 units last year, is still falling far short of that required.”
Ms Barry said more social housing was vital if the chain of homelessness was to be broken.
Some €36.7m of the grant will go to services in the Dublin area alone, with €15.8m spent on emergency B&B-type accommodation in the capital.
Focus Ireland noted that in 2003 nearly half of all funding went on emergency bed nights in the city.
Ms Barry welcomed the shift away from emergency accommodation towards longer term solutions.
“It reflects the good work going on in the homeless sector in areas such as settlement services and prevention work.
“The €3.9m in funding Focus Ireland will receive will go towards helping us to deliver upon our own Five-year strategy to tackle homelessness.
“We aim to secure 800 units of accommodation through a combination of direct acquisition, partnership and building programmes during this period.”
Focus Ireland noted tat 80% of the housing will be for single adults, the majority group of people who are homeless, while 20% will be for families.
Ms Barry added that Government economists have called for social housing supply to be increased by 73,000 between 2005-2112, roughly 10,000 units a year.
