Community centres to get homelessness advice packs

A homelessness charity has started providing detailed advice packs to community centres after they reported a "surge" in requests for help from people at risk of losing their homes.

Focus Ireland launched the guidebook yesterday in a bid to tackle the growing homelessness crisis.

The guidebook is targeted at community groups, citizen information centres, and other local support organisations.

In particular, it is focusing on communities which until now had no specialist housing advice centres — meaning information on what to do when at risk of homelessness is not readily available to families at risk of being evicted.

While the document is not intended to be used as a direct hand-out for the public, Focus Ireland’s acting chief executive Mark Byrne said the knock-on effect will be the availability of clearer advice to those who need it most.

“The combination of escalating rents, rent allowance caps, and unwillingness among many landlords to accept rent supplement is forcing more lower-income households out of the housing market,” he said.

“However, we know through our work that it’s possible to help families and individuals from losing their home through early intervention and support.

“The new guidebook will play a part in helping efforts to prevent homelessness at a local level nationwide in areas where there is currently no speciality housing advice service.”

The advice document has been made available just a week after Government announced a major pre-election plan to tackle homelessness across the country.

The ‘Implementation Plan on the State’s Response to Homelessness’ aims to provide €29.7m to the sector by the end of 2016 in a bid to address concerns that a rent and property bubble, coupled with ongoing austerity measures, is forcing people into homelessness.

Last week, an inner-city Dublin group asked Taoiseach Enda Kenny and Housing Minister Jan O Sullivan to attend one of its nightly support services.

The independent Inner City Helping Homeless campaign group made the request after warning that seven people are being made homeless every day in the city, including a woman who was nine months pregnant and found sleeping on the streets last week.

Among the issues contributing to the problem was the fact rent supplements

are “systematically too low for families” struggling to stay in their homes, Focus Ireland noted.