A meeting of the Oireachtas Committee on Housing and Homelessness today
The committee will be fully aware that there are in excess of 6,000 people in homelessness across Ireland, of whom 2,000 are children. In addition to the family homeless emergency there over 3,000 adults with no dependents in homeless services nationally.
Individuals, and indeed couples, face enormous challenges in accessing housing. The people that Peter McVerry Trust supports can often be excluded by mainstream social housing providers. Inadequate housing provision and housing supports mean that it is single individuals who face the longest wait for housing and the greatest risk of damage and institutionalisation by the system.
Despite the deepening emergency across Ireland there are only 5 counties where there are more than 100 people in homelessness.
However, the situation is shifting dramatically. For example, in Kildare the numbers in homelessness has doubled since January 1st. In Tipperary the figure has gone from 4 individuals to 54 individuals in just 3 months. In Dublin there are, on average, 8 new adult presentations per day.
From the Peter McVerry Trust’s opening statement to the Oireachtas Committee on Housing and Homelessness this morning.
Read the statement in full here
…first class accommodation could be provided in the facilities at Trinity and UCD…all the homeless could be housed there until a solution was found…that would sharpen a few minds.
And what, make the students homeless? There is also a shortage of student accommodation!
Immediate fundraising by the NTMA required so the government should build 50,000 social houses per year over the next 5 years. That’ll soften the cough of the pondscum banks, developers & vulture funds that are maintaining the property bubble with their immoral practices.
Rent control, cap and reductions where over inflated rents, plucked from thin air, artificially raise the national average. Tax incentives for landlords and a restriction on the number of properties one can own to rent. Nationalise ‘absentee landlord’ vacant property, ‘use it or loose it’ on all derelict properties. Then we can have a conversation on this national emergency.
Authorities don’t really give a poo
McVerry is absolutely loving it.
Be constructive.
Why not use the Sulky Labour Types for Abortion’s 12 pairs of knickers protest outside Leinster House to make a tent for the homeless and help solve the problem? They’re big-assed knickers. You’d get at least 50 in there.