Simon sees 33% rise in demand for services

The Government has accepted it cannot rely on the private rental market to solve the housing crisis, according to the CEO of the Simon Communities of Ireland.

“I think the Government really realises now they can’t depend on the rental market and that strategy, going back over the years, was flawed,” said Sam McGuinness.

“That may have been because of the economic climate, Government was saying it has to be the rental market that supplies the accommodation and that’s because they possibly didn’t have the money and couldn’t loosen up the purse strings for building so their opportunity was hampered.”

Mr McGuinness was speaking at yesterday’s launch of the charity’s annual report for 2016, which showed that there has been a 33% increase in the number of people turning to the organisation for support.

“Today we are reporting the number of people we worked with last year increasing to 11,005 people — this is an increase of a third in just one year,” said Niamh Randall, national spokeswoman for the charity.

Of this figure, 1,417 were families and 2,860 were children.

Separate to this, 4,547 people accessed prevention or early prevention advice services.

In terms of the charity’s financial resources to carry out its work, the vast majority of funding came from donations from the public and corporate sponsors.

Its income in 2016 totalled €934,343.

Some €772,330, or 82.7%, of this was generated through fundraising, with the rest coming from grants.

There are currently 8,500 people homeless in Ireland and 3,194 of these are children.

There have been accusations that the Government does not want to interfere in the market and instead wants the private rental market and developers to serve the country’s accommodation needs, as opposed to investing in social housing.

However, Mr McGuinness said the Government is now taking action.

“I think there is a huge push behind Government presently,” he said. “I think they can see the size of the crisis and they have no option but to get around it and I think that is coming from the Minister for Finance which is critical, because if you don’t have the money and purse strings aren’t being loosened up, there is no way the Minister for Housing can do what he wants to do.”

However, he stated that it is critical that no more people become homeless.

“What we really need to do is to stop people from losing their homes and actually somehow, to stop the water from spilling over the top of the dam — if we can do that then we have a chance of housing the people that are there,” he said.

Asked by the Irish Examiner if homeless charities are being critical enough of Government policy, in light of funding, Mr McGuinness said their job is to be both objective and to give people who are in crisis hope.

“Homeless charities are speaking out. We speak out,” said Mr McGuinness. “We have to give people hope. If there are 8,500 people in emergency accommodation, they don’t want Sam McGuinness coming out and saying ‘there’s no future’.”