812 homeless people sleep on cafe floor in two months
The night cafe, operated by Merchant’s Quay Ireland at its centre in Dublin, received 3,018 separate referrals between January 21 and March 23, the majority of whom were sent by the Central Placement Service via its freephone number.
The cafe allows up to 50 people to sleep on floors on crash mats, with up to 18 people in a room, and clients are only referred to the service after other beds in the system are allocated and all other openings exhausted.
Many clients told the Irish Examiner the night cafe — which has funding until the end of the year — was preferable to other options given the services available on site and the skills mix of staff.
Already the night cafe — visited privately by Taoiseach Enda Kenny last month — has had to bring forward its opening hours, with statistics for the first 22 nights of March showing that it was full for allocations each night by 11.45pm.
Very kind surprise visit to our Night Cafe last night from An Taoiseach. Our clients were very happy to have their voices heard
— Merchants Quay Ireland (MQI) (@MerchantsQuayIR) March 12, 2015
Manager Brenda Kane said it was already aware of 37 ‘top presenters’, people who have stayed in the facility more than half the nights it has been open.
The 812 people who have used the service since January 21 include a number of people who have since been excluded for infractions that range from drug or alcohol use in the toilets to serious violence or verbal abuse towards other clients or staff.
Some of those excluded from the night service are still able to attend day services at Merchant’s Quay Ireland. “If someone calls to the door, they will try and meet their basic needs under the terms of their exclusion,” said Ms Kane.
“We will help where possible. We know if they don’t have this provision, the only other option is rough sleeping, and that weighs heavy on the person and on the staff.”
Our Night Cafe has been open and busy for 2 weeks. 42 homeless people who didn't have beds had a warm safe place to be last night
— Merchants Quay Ireland (MQI) (@MerchantsQuayIR) February 4, 2015
Ms Kane said, had the cafe not been open, those people would have had little option than to sleep rough. She said the rough sleeper count, which in November put the number of people sleeping rough in Dublin at 168, could be four or five times that amount in reality.
She said there had already been some successes with clients either progressing to other forms of accommodation or accessing services and returning to their families, but that there was still a “crisis” in Dublin, four months after the death of Jonathan Corrie just metres from Leinster House.
“It’s a much bigger picture than street homelessness,” said Ms Kane. “That’s the worst-case scenario but it’s much bigger than that.”
When it came to casework interventions with clients of the cafe, accommodation was the main reason, with many people stating they were recently homeless due to job loss.
3,018 total referrals.
812 unique clients.
682 men.
20%+ foreigners.
2,048 referrals from Central Placement Service.
49% of casework interventions involved accommodation and 16% of casework interventions were due to medical issue.
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