Housing need for homeless 'underestimated'

FIGURES ON homelessness released by the Government last week underestimate the scale of the housing problem by more than half, homeless charity Focus Ireland claimed yesterday.

Any official policy based on the figures contained in the Department of the Environment’s 2008 Housing Needs Assessment bulletin would fail to address the scale of the State’s homelessness problem, according to Focus Ireland’s advocacy director Mike Allen.

The bulletin says that on March 31st, 2008, there were 1,394 homeless households on social housing waiting lists in the State. Some 709 of these were in the Dublin region, with 371 in Cork, Limerick and Galway.

However, Focus Ireland says a survey of the Dublin region by homeless agency Counted In found that there were 2,144 households using homeless services.

Similar studies conducted by Counted In in Cork, Limerick and Galway cities in the last year found some 767 households who could be considered homeless.

“The differences between the Counted In figures and the Housing Needs Assessment figures are startling,” Mr Allen said.

“Adjusting the figure for the country as a whole, the total homeless figure would be 3,499 households, rather than the 1,394 households as claimed by the Housing Needs Assessment . . . As with previous years its credibility is clearly in doubt.”

A spokesman for the department defended the figures, stating they were correct, as they only related to the number of homeless people who were on local authority housing waiting lists at that time.

“It is a snapshot of the number of people applying for local authority housing,” he said. “Not all homeless people apply for local authority housing, so it is not an assessment of the number of homeless people in the country.”

The bulletin says that in 2008 there were 56,249 people on local authority housing waiting lists.

Focus Ireland has argued that some of the empty apartments and houses that come into State ownership through the National Asset Management Agency (Nama) could be used to provide homes for an estimated 60,000 households.

“We are looking at the Nama legislation to see what sort of amendments would be needed to make this happen,” Mr Allen said.

He said a number of political parties had indicated their support for the idea, which, he believes, could prevent dereliction and “provide homes of the right type, in the right locations, that are integrated with other infrastructure and services”, and built in accordance with local development plans.

Meanwhile, figures from the Cork Simon Community show it turned away an average of four people from its emergency shelter every night in July. In August, the figure had doubled to eight refusals per night on average. In May, 11 people were refused entry to the shelter on average each night because it was full.

The city centre shelter provides sleeping accommodation for 115 people each night, but its services are being stretched by a combination of demand and cutbacks in funding and donations received.

Cork TD and Labour spokesman on housing Ciarán Lynch said homelessness needed to remain at the top of the political agenda.