Give Me a Crash Course in . . . homelessness

Homelessness is top of the news agenda again. Why is that? The number of families becoming homeless, especially in Dublin, has been going up since last summer, but it became headline news last week when a family with three young children were found sleeping rough in a park in the city.

It's unthinkable that a family with young children could be sleeping rough. How could that happen?
Their story is not untypical of the 556 homeless families, including 1,185 children, now in emergency accommodation in Dublin. This family lost their private rental accommodation when the house was repossessed . They were unable to find somewhere else to stay and had been sleeping rough for three nights before Inner City Helping the Homeless, a voluntary organisation, responded to a call to help them. They were brought to the organisation's central Dublin depot and subsequently placed in emergency accommodation.

Surely they should have been given emergency accommodation before it came to sleeping rough.
The story shows just how much pressure the increasing numbers of families losing their homes are putting on services. The family in this story sought help from Dublin City Council's central placement unit, which allocates emergency accommodation, but it had no beds. Focus Ireland also called the unit on the family's behalf. When it was told about the lack of beds, the charity told its rough-sleeper team to contact the family. The team gave them sleeping bags and contacted Inner City Helping Homeless. They are not the first family to be turned away, and possibly not the first to have slept rough.

What is causing all this?
The key reason is that a growing number of low-income families can't afford the rent. A Daft.ie report this week found that rents have increased by 8.6 per cent nationally in a year, with particular pressures in Dublin, Cork, Galway, Limerick and the commuter counties around Dublin. Families are being squeezed out of the private rental market, especially those dependent on rent allowance.

Is anything being done to ease pressure on rents?
The Government correctly says that the ultimate solution is to increase housing supply. It points to its Social Housing Strategy 2020, which it says will deliver 18,000 social-housing units by the end of 2017 and a further 17,000 by 2020.

But that's up to five years away. What about the families with children in emergency accommodation or at risk of sleeping rough now? T
he Government seems to be struggling to find an immediate solution for these families. There have been numerous calls for some form of rent control, or rent certainty, coupled with an increase in rent supplement. Rent certainty, which was first mooted by Minister for the Environment Alan Kelly in February, is on the agenda for the autumn. Without it, rent supplement is unlikely to be increased. Next month Dublin City Council will showcase one idea that could get hundreds of families out of emergency accommodation: prefabricated modular housing. Were it to get the go-ahead, up to 400 units, built to the highest specifications, could be assembled around the city within weeks. The idea met with political opposition when mooted in September last year. There has been no opposition to the latest plan to display samples of such housing.

What has changed in a year? Another 517 children have become homeless.