Housing charity: State should focus on prevention

THE state must invest more in sustainable housing solutions rather than emergency accommodation and street services, national housing charity Threshold has warned.

Launching its annual report for 2010, chairwoman of Threshold Aideen Hayden said the cost of keeping a person in emergency homeless accommodation for one year is €29,000, whereas the cost of accommodating them in the private rented sector — with support — is about €11,000.

Ms Hayden said the majority of homeless people that come through its services could have been housed at a much earlier stage, or could have been prevented from entering into homelessness in the first place, if they had received more appropriate advice when they initially presented to the authorities with a housing problem.

“Traditionally, the policy focus has been on reacting to homelessness, rather than solving or preventing it,” Ms Hayden said.

“The state invests hugely in supporting emergency hostel accommodation and street services, for example, but if more homelessness was prevented, there would be less need for these services.

“It would represent much better value for money to prioritise homelessness prevention measures, rather than focusing primarily on supports for people who are homeless. Adopting this approach would minimise the risk of homelessness for families throughout Ireland, and would ensure that the Exchequer funding available to tackle this problem is used in the most cost-efficient way.”

According to its annual report, Threshold’s advice and advocacy services made 19,559 interventions on behalf of a broad range of people from families, couples, single people, lone parents, older people, students, people in low-paid employment, unemployed and migrant workers.

Over a third of Threshold’s clients relied on social welfare payments for their income. And although half (50%) of Threshold’s clients were in employment, many were in low-paid jobs such as retail, hospitality and manual labour.