Number in emergency accommodation passes 9,000 amid rising Covid fears
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The number of people living in emergency accommodation has passed the 9,000 mark for the first time since April 2020 raising fears the current spike in Covid-19 cases could worsen the homelessness crisis.
The latest monthly homelessness report, for last November, shows 9,099 people were living in emergency accommodation, including 2,548 children.
The report shows more than half of all homeless adults are aged 25 to 44 and that well over half are living in private emergency accommodation, such as hotels and B&Bs.
Some 70% of homeless adults last November were living in Dublin — 4,568 people — while Cork city and county had the next highest figure, with 443 people.
There were also 815 families in emergency accommodation in the capital that month, involving 1,930 children; the west had the second-highest number of homeless families (79) and children (195).
The number of people in emergency accommodation has been climbing steadily since a drop at the onset of the pandemic, and the latest monthly tally is a rise of 269 from the 8,830 who were homeless last October.
Emma Kilkenny, head of fundraising and communications at Dublin Simon Community, said: "We are concerned for the months ahead as financial pressures, rising costs, and widespread Covid-19 cases bring many people closer and closer to the poverty line."
"However, this year we are in a very different situation as Covid-19 cases in the community have reached an all-time high.
"This is having a very real impact on people who are in unstable accommodation or employment, with our teams doing all they can to keep people in their homes and preventing them from being pushed into homelessness.”
Peter McVerry, SJ of the Jesuit Centre for Faith and Justice, said there had been a rise in homelessness since the government reversed its October 2020 decision to ban on evictions from the private rented sector.
"Since the lifting of the ban in April 2021, the number of adults and children in homelessness has increased by more than 1,100," he said.
"With future eviction bans having been ruled out, the number of homeless families will almost certainly continue to increase in the months ahead.”
Keith Adams, Social Policy Advocate at the Jesuit Centre for Faith and Justice, said the government needed to take preventative measures now.
“The increase of over 1,100 adults and children since the lifting of the eviction ban is one of the fastest periods of increasing homelessness since early 2018, when numbers rose to more than 10,000 adults and children.
Fr McVerry pointed out that in the last three months alone, 359 children have been made homeless, while Focus Ireland noted that the November report marked the sixth consecutive monthly increase in overall homelessness.
The charity said its CEO, Pat Dennigan, is planning to bring a series of proposals on preventing entry to homelessness to the next meeting of the new Homeless Action Committee, but Focus Ireland, Director of Advocacy, Mike Allen, warned that landlords issued more than 2,000 eviction notices in the first nine months of last year – more than in the whole of 2020.
"The number of notices of termination has steadily increased since lockdown restrictions were lifted in April," Mr Allen said.
"Half of the notices of termination are due to landlords evicting to sell up, so the Government’s proposals for regulation have done a lot to discourage landlords and very little to protect tenants.
"This is highly worrying at any time but especially when the number of Covid-19 cases have risen so much again.”