Peter McVerry Trust tweetz:
Latest homeless figures from DoHPCLG show a net increase of 86 people in homelessness from July to Aug 2016. Total now stands at 6,611…
Tag Archives: Homelessness
A person sleeps behind the railings of the Custom House in Dublin
The Simon Community released its annual report for 2015 this morning.
The launch of this report followed an early-morning count of the number of people sleeping rough in Dublin.
168 people were counted.
The main findings of the Simon Community’s report are as follows:
10% of people moved out of emergency accommodation into a home
59% of people in emergency accommodation have been homeless for more than two years
32% increase in the numbers counted on Early Morning Rough Sleeping counts in the last year (not including the 60 without a bed in the Merchants Quay Ireland Night Café) 168 counted this morning
31% increase in those accessing Addiction Treatment Services
46% increase in housing capacity, through opening and acquiring 109 new properties in 2015.
59% increase in those accessing Emergency Accommodation
Dublin Simon Community Annual Report 2015 – Key Findings (Simon Community)
Sam Boal/Rollingnews
Imagine
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Hugh Byrne, from Dublin; Rob Argent, from England; and Vivienne Stuettgen, from Germany, are PhD students in science areas in UCD.
Hugh writes:
We produced this video as part of a social entrepreneurship module that we all completed as part of our PhD programmes in the innovation academy in UCD. The module aims at identifying social problems and coming up with novel solutions to challenge them.
We’re trying to raise awareness about homelessness in Dublin and Ireland and the possible uses of derelict buildings in the city.
Previously: Turned Away
Thanks Hugh
Turned Away
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Sinn Féin TD Mary Lou McDonald
“I want to raise the issue of homelessness with you, Tánaiste, and I want to do so in telling you about Áine. She’s an 18-year-old young woman and on Tuesday of this week, she presented as homeless to her local council, along with her partner and their four-month infant daughter.”
“The council refused to accept that she was genuinely in need of emergency accommodation and she was turned away. At 4.30pm that afternoon she rang the freephone number but no emergency accommodation was available. At 9pm that night she again to be told that there was still no emergency accommodation.”
“Eventually, at 12.30am, standing outside Heuston Station, shivering and holding her infant child, she was collected by the Rough Sleepers Team and brought to a hostel.”
“Now Áine, Tanaiste, is just one of 10 families turned away from local authorities on that day, on Tuesday, only later to be accommodated throughout the Rough Sleepers Team. The last of the families wasn’t accommodate until 1.30am in the morning.”
“Yesterday, Áine returned to her local council only to be turned away again. She was eventually accommodated by the freephone at 8pm in the night and, as we speak Tanaiste, this young woman is yet again on her way back to her local authority not knowing where she and her family will sleep tonight.”
“And the reason why families are being turned away from the local authorities is because there isn’t enough emergency accommodation and staff in local authorities are being asked to make really an impossible choice between families – between those who will have a bed and those who are sent back out onto the street.”
“Tanaiste, I could read out the statistics and you will know homelessness is out of control, you will know that on the watch of your Government, homelessness has increased by 86% in one single year…”
Sinn Féin TD Mary Lou McDonald speaking during Leaders’ Questions, recieved by Tánaiste Frances Fitzgerald this afternoon.
Meanwhile….
Brú Aimsir Hostel
You may recall how Brú Aimsir Hostel opened at the Digital Hub on Thomas Street, Dublin 8 last year – as part of Dublin City Council’s Cold Weather Initiative.
Last month, the 100-bed facility was to close down – prompting residents of Brú to hold protests against the closure.
Further to this…
Dublin City Council writes:
[Brú] was due to close at the end of March but its closure was deferred until May 31, due to cold weather in March and April. In anticipation of a closure by May 31, an orderly wind down of the facility was commenced and the number using the facility on a nightly basis was reduced to around 40.
However, in light of the continuing increase in the numbers sleeping rough in the Dublin region and following the intervention of the Lord Mayor Críona Ní Dhálaigh, agreement has now been reached to extend the use of Brú Aimsir and to operate it at full capacity.
Previously: Meanwhile, At Brú
The National Homeless and Housing Coalition is organising a protest.
Supporters will meet tomorrow at 2pm, outside the Custom House, Dublin 1 before marching to the GPO on O’Connell Street.
April 2016 figures show that there were 6,189 people in homeless services nationally, up from 5,983 in March (Net Monthly Increase 226).
— Peter McVerry Trust (@PMVTrust) May 23, 2016
74 families became homeless in Dublin last month (Breaking News)
Acting Environment Minister Alan Kelly outside the newly built modular homes in Ballymun yesterday
Further to yesterday’s forum on housing and homelessness in Dublin, during which acting Environment Minister Alan Kelly claimed the constitution prevented him from fixing the housing crisis…
Ellen Coyne, in The Times Ireland edition, writes:
Mr Kelly, according to himself, is an unsung hero who tried to save us all from vulture funds, mean landlords and undesirable developers. The whole time that the media and homelessness charities were claiming government inaction on the issue, Mr Kelly was trying again and again to pass remedying legislation, only to be foiled every time by that nefarious constitution.
…“I didn’t have to do this [forum],” Mr Kelly said nobly. “I was under no obligation.”
…Mr Kelly stood beaming and posing outside one of the [modular] houses [in Ballymun] as if he was about to start hosting his own episode of Room to Improve.
“The minister will take some questions on modular housing first,” Mr Kelly’s special adviser said.
“Temporary housing,” Mr Kelly interjected.
You’re not supposed to use “modular housing” for the “fast build” homes, which are finally almost finished, over budget and well over deadline. They cost more than other properties for sale in the area, and there are concerns that they looked suspiciously more like permanent, normal houses where people could end up living for years.
“I’m not a developer,” Mr Kelly pleaded.
Neither were any of the journalists but most of them noticed something strange about the houses. Is it normal for temporary housing to be made of bricks?
“No,” Bríd McGrath, the head of social policy for Respond Housing Association, said.
The houses are very warm and nice and big. A bit like ministerial offices, only a tad smaller, one presumes.
“I’d say they’ll have problems getting people out of these,” Ms McGrath said as the camera flashes exploded around a temporary minister who, unfortunately, doesn’t have the option of staying put.
Previously: ‘There Was No Concrete Plan’
Sasko Lazarov/Rollingnews
From top: The homeless volunteer group in Dublin, You’re Not Alone, distributing items on Tuesday night – the group looked after 263 people before running out of food; acting Environment Minister Alan Kelly at the Custom House this morning
Further to the forum on housing and homelessness in the Custom House this morning…
Acting Environment Minister Alan Kelly spoke to Conor Brophy on RTÉ’s News At One.
Niamh Randall, national spokesperson for the Simon Community, was also interviewed by RTÉ’s Conor Brophy.
Grab a tay.
Alan Kelly: “What’s happening here is actually very useful today. We’ve had a number of presentations from the Housing Agency, from NAMA, from the CIF, from the Homeless Executive and from the people who are in charge of local authority funding and various other areas. You see in order to sort this issue you’ve got a whole load of levers across a whole load of various departments and organisations. And, also, on top of that you’ve got an intricate web of solutions that are required, you know, there’s a spectrum of issues across a whole range of areas here – whether it’s in finance, whether it’s in social services, whether it is in the timeline it takes to actually go and build housing, whether it’s in a whole load of areas, of planning and other areas. They are all inter-connected, there’s one thing I will leave this department, pushing out there. There is no silver bullet. All of these are interconnected and you need to get people into the room to ensure that they get into solution mode, get talking to one another in order to actually sort this out.”
Conor Brophy: “But these sound like learnings from your time as minister and learnings somebody else will have to take on when a new Government is formed. It doesn’t sound like there’s anything there that could be implemented right now or a solution that’s presenting itself in the interregnum.”
Kelly: “Well, I don’t accept that at all. In fact, you know, I was here for 20 months in this department and we got through a huge amount of legislation, a huge amount of changes whether it was in the area of rent, whether it’s in the fact there was €4billion for social housing, whether it’s in dealing with a whole range of other areas when it came to housing. We got through a whole range of 26 very significant actions which I’m not going to recount for you here, we don’t have time, but really what we’re positioning people here is that, I mean, I’m not going to be grandstanding while I’m in opposition,or whoever is going to be in this department later on. What I want to see is solutions. And if people aren’t talking at the level at which they’re talking at inside here, you will not find solutions because whoever is replacing me in this department, and Minister Paudie Coffey in the department will need these people to be talking at the level in which they’re talking. So I believe that, today, is about solutions…”
Later
Niamh Randall: “I think there was probably a bit of a missed opportunity with the forum. It was very presentation heavy. So, at 12.15pm, we were still hearing presentations from a number of different stakeholders and that wasn’t an opportunity for the people who were present, attending the open forum, to take place. So I think that possibly was a bit of a missed opportunity. I think maybe and maybe there is an opportunity to pull people together, to have a facilitated discussion, getting the ideas from the floor and suggestions and ideas from the floor. And secondly, there wasn’t a concrete plan there – certainly while I was present anyway, in terms of what would happen next, so where this will go, particularly when we’re in this vacuum of having a government and in this vacuum of having, we’ve an acting minister. How does all this happen? How do we ensure there’s activity in the meantime? There didn’t seem to be a concrete plan there and I did ask that question from the floor and there wasn’t a clear answer in relation to that. So there was a little sense, I felt, of a lack of urgency around all of this. And I suppose the thing that we really see on the ground, in the Simon Community, is the impact that this is having on people every single day and this is absolutely urgent…”
Later
Randall: “”Critically, one of the voices missing from the panel, I felt, was the Department of Social Protection. They did ask, some representative to speak from the audience, in relation to the issues on rent supplement but that is a key issue in terms of pushing people into homelessness and preventing people from leaving homelessness behind and the fact that that wasn’t represented on the panel really leads me to believe that the analysis may be flawed at some level.”
Listen back in full here
Earlier: ‘I Was Blocked By The Constitution’
Erica Fleming
You may recall how Erica Fleming featured in an RTÉ documentary, My Homeless Family, earlier this year.
The documentary showed how Erica, 30, has been living in a Dublin hotel room with her nine-year-old daughter Emily since last summer. Erica works 29 hours a week at a business which has employed her for five years.
You may also recall how Erica’s questions during a post-Budget RTÉ phone-in last October caused a bit of a headache for Minister for Public Expenditure and Reform Brendan Howlin and Finance Minister Michael Noonan.
Further to this…
Erica writes:
One hundred years ago, brave Irish men and women took to the streets of Dublin to fight for an Ireland that was more equal than the one they had known previously. They fought for a Republic that guaranteed equal rights and equal opportunities. Most notable for me as a mother, they fought for an Ireland where all of the children of the nation would be cherished equally.
They were incredibly brave but their vision for how our Republic should be, has not been realised. In our Ireland today, 130,000 children live in consistent child poverty. To our great shame, there are 1,600 children in our city who are homeless and spending large parts of their childhood living in single room hotel accommodation.
My beautiful daughter Emily is one of those children. As a mother I want to fight for her. I want to take to the streets and stare power in the eye and hold it to account for the experiences of poverty that are facing my child daily. Her playground is a hotel corridor: I rarely get to provide her with a home cooked meal. As I tuck her in at night, I can’t even afford her the dignity of leaving the room. This isn’t the Republic that people died for and I feel duty bound to demand that my daughter be cherished equally in the eyes of this State.
I feel that the best way that I, and others like me. can pay tribute to the heroes of 1916, is to also take to the streets of Dublin over the Easter weekend.
So here’s what I’m proposing. On Easter Sunday, I invite all of the homeless people of this country to stand with me and other campaigners on O’Connell Street and remind those politicians who will be celebrating the centenary of the Rising, that our children are important too.
Stand with me and, through our presence on the day, let it be known that the best way to pay tribute to those who sacrificed themselves for this Republic, would be to prioritise solving the homeless crisis that is plaguing the lives of so many people in this country.
This will be a friendly, family-orientated event and all we will be doing on the day is standing in solidarity with homeless families. There will be no speeches, there will be no rallies or microphones and there will be absolutely no hate permitted from anybody standing with us – regardless of where it’s directed.
Our intention on the day is to highlight that our children matter and that a home is the minimum we should be affording our children on this anniversary of an event associated with such strong themes of equality and what it truly means to live in a Republic.
Please share this message! Let this event be known to your friends and families and let’s try make this event one that those who sacrificed their lives a century ago would be proud of. This is my duty as a mother. This is our duty as citizens of this Republic.
Easter Sunday protest for the homeless (Facebook)
Previously: “It’s Not Really A Response, Is It? It’s Just A Speech”
All Pod Cons
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A homeless ‘shelter pod’ placed on Molesworth Street, Dublin (top) and being removed this morning (above)
You may recall how on the morning of February 15, 2016, homeless campaign group Gimme Shelter Ireland erected four ‘shelter pods’ across Dublin.
One was placed outside the Central Bank on Dame Street; one opposite the Dáil on Molesworth Street, next to where Jonathan Corrie died in December 2014; one beside Busáras facing the Custom House; and one on O’Connell Street.
The pod placed outside the Central Bank was removed later that day.
Further to this…
Seán Kenehan, in Lovin’ Dublin, writes:
A homeless ‘shelter pod’ on Molesworth Street was demolished and removed by the council in the early hours of this morning.
It had been home to Columb Fogarty, a homeless writer who just last night detailed his experience living on the streets in an article he wrote for Lovin Dublin.
Columb was given just five minutes to clear out when the removal happened suddenly at 7am – and some of his belongings were still in the shelter when it was destroyed.
Previously: For Pod’s Sake
Pics: Rabble and Lovin’ Dublin