Friday, October 07, 2011

Accommodation crisis sees homeless offered sleeping bags

A policy change has been blamed by Jesuit campaigner Fr Peter McVerry for an accommodation crisis in the homeless sector in Dublin.

The founder of the McVerry Trust, which supports young homeless move towards independent living, told ciNews that Dublin City Council has been forced to offer sleeping bags to up to 40 people a night for whom there is no accommodation available.  

Describing homeless services in the capital as close to collapse, he explained that more people are today forced to sleep on the streets than at any time in the past ten years.

“It is terrible in this day and age.  Everybody should have a place to stay; that shouldn’t be an issue,” Fr McVerry said.

The problem arose because of a policy change aimed at getting as many people in emergency accommodation as quickly as possible into long-term accommodation. 

A shortfall of almost 800 units has meant that there is a mismatch between the numbers leaving emergency accommodation and the numbers being able to access longterm accommodation.

“The long term accommodation has not been forthcoming as quickly as had been expected and therefore closing the emergency accommodation without having a sufficient number of long term accommodation units has led to this under-supply of accommodation,” he explained.

Fr McVerry added that the problem is compounded by the fact that the Department of Justice has closed some of the centres for migrants seeking to stay in Ireland and that they are now being told to access the homeless persons units as well.

This, Fr McVerry said, is further compounded by the fact that much of the accommodation is shared.  

In some cases, “People are sharing with maybe two, three and up to 14 or 15 other people in a dormitory,” Fr McVerry explained.

He said nearly all of the complaints he is getting regarding emergency accommodation relate to shared units as clients are waking up to find their money and belongings gone.  

Others complained of having to share with active drug users.

Fr McVerry called for the provision of space and secure accommodation for every homeless person.

“Even if there are sufficient beds for every homeless person, I think the next step that the homeless services have to address is providing each homeless person a room of their own where they can feel safe and that their belongings are safe,” he said.