ADDITIONAL funds to tackle the homelessness crisis sweeping the country “can’t come soon enough” according to the Cork Simon Community.
Dermot Kavanagh, Cork Simon Director. Pic: Diane Cusack
Dermot Kavanagh, director of Cork Simon, said he welcomed the “many positive measures” announced in yesterday’s budget, including a €28m increase in the allocation for emergency accommodation. This brings the total budget for emergency accommodation to €100m.
“It’s unfortunate that size of an increase is necessary but it’s obviously essential people have a roof over their heads at the end of the day,” said Mr Kavanagh.
“We would hope that in the future we will see a move away from short-term measures.”
Long-term solutions announced yesterday took the form of a €1.2bn allocation for housing, with the Government aiming for 47,000 new social housing units by 2021.
The prevention of homelessness was also addressed, with an additional €105m to enable more than 15,000 extra households to avail of the Housing Assistance Payment Scheme.
Making the funding announcement yesterday, Housing Minister Simon Coveney said the Government has made “strong commitments” in terms of tackling homelessness — commitments which it “intends to honour”. He also said funding for this area will “continue to grow into 2018”.
Mr Kavanagh said the minister’s comments, coupled with the increased funding, reinforces the plans set out in Rebuilding Ireland, the Government’s action plan on housing and homelessness.
“This is a step in the right direction. It’s clearly informed by Rebuilding Ireland, which Simon Coveney launched a few weeks back. If implemented it should make very significant inroads on homelessness,” he said.
“Just looking at this today you can see there are clear actions being taken in the budget to support the implementation of Rebuilding Ireland. These kind of changes can’t happen fast enough as far as we’re concerned. We saw that despite very good intentions that only 87 social housing units were produced in 2015. I know that there has been a significant growth in that in 2016 and we hope to see a major step up in 2017 and beyond.”
He said the Simon Communities will, however, be keeping a close eye on how the new plans progress. “These measures seem to be, broadly speaking, the right measures to support the implementation of Rebuilding Ireland but we’re going to be closely monitoring the implementation of that and doing everything we can to ensure things move quickly and that there’s no red tape and we actually see housing appearing,” he said. “Especially for people who are long-term homeless, sooner rather than later, because as soon as we start moving people out of shelters and off the streets the happier everybody’s going to be.”
Meanwhile, Focus Ireland also welcomed the additional funding for housing and homelessness announced in yesterday’s budget, but warned “more immediate” action is needed to halt the “constant rise” in the number of families becoming homeless.
“The budget puts some welcome substance behind the long-term strategy of Rebuilding Ireland but the measures to tackle the immediate crisis are far too modest,” said Mike Allen, director of advocacy.
“In particular the 5% increased relief for landlords seems unlikely to change the mind of the increasing number of landlords selling, which is one of the main reasons many people are becoming homeless. This relief already exists for landlords with social housing tenants. It is worrying not more was done on this issue as it would have a positive impact on the numbers becoming homeless if greater action had been taken to prevent more landlords from leaving the sector.”
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