CIARÁN NERVOUSLY twists a cup of coffee around in his weather-beaten hands as he explains how he ended up homeless last April.
“I was living in Britain for a good few years but due to a family tragedy I came back to Dublin. I had nowhere to live and spent the past two months staying here at Cedar House,” he says.
Cedar House is an emergency accommodation shelter for homeless men run by the Salvation Army. It offers up to 30 people a bed and meal every night – typically for a period of weeks – to keep them off the streets.
Ciarán, like many residents, has a history of drug addiction and depression. By his own admission his life has been chaotic and he hasn’t held down a job for a time.
“I was on disability in the UK but now I’m going on to jobseeker’s allowance. This is like me throwing my dummy away – it is quite scary. But I want a job, a home and some self-esteem,” he says. Ciarán returned to Dublin to spend time with his daughter, who goes to school in Dublin.
Support staff at Cedar House have directed him towards education courses and a gym programme. They have also helped him negotiate the welfare system and will shortly move him from Cedar House to the Granby Centre, which provides residents with a bedsit and continuing mentoring to help them move on to their own homes.
The type of intensive support provided by the Granby Centre to its homeless residents is at the core of the Government’s flagship “Pathway to Home” strategy.
Designed to end long-term homelessness by the end of the year, the strategy aims to provide 1,200 long-term tenancies to move homeless people out of emergency hostels; disperse homeless people from Dublin city centre across all four local authority areas; and reconfigure the services offered by up to 30 voluntary and statutory agencies.
Cedar House is among three hostels pinpointed for closure in the “Pathway to Home” strategy. On September 31st the hostel is scheduled to close its doors as new long-term housing is expected to come on stream to provide proper housing to some of the most vulnerable people in the city. But with only a few months left in 2010, a question mark hangs over the Government’s ability to deliver on its promise of ending long-term homelessness this year.
Despite the pressures on the exchequer, Minister for Housing Michael Finneran, has provided €20 million as part of a social housing leasing scheme in an attempt to source tenancies. Under this scheme landlords are offered long-term leases with guaranteed rents for up to 20 years for social housing. The tenancies will be managed by local authorities.
Public funds are also available for social housing bodies to buy housing to provide long-term tenancies for homeless people. Yet despite the tens of thousands of homes lying empty in Dublin, owners have been slow to engage.
Cathal Morgan, chief executive of the Homeless Agency, pinpoints a reluctance on the part of owners to lease property to the homeless for fear it will depress the value of the property when the 20-year lease expires. Developers who may consider leasing to social housing bodies often find their hands tied by banks, who are unwilling to sign up to long leases when loans were originally agreed on the basis of a quicker return.
This difficulty in sourcing tenancies now threatens to undermine the “Pathway to Home” strategy, which has taken years of negotiations between different voluntary and statutory bodies in the homeless sector. Ironically, the Homeless Agency signed off on the final plan for the reconfiguration of all Dublin’s homeless services yesterday.
Whether this plan can be implemented depends on the ability of the Government, local authorities and social housing bodies to source viable tenancies to house the homeless.