Small group of homeless account for half of beds over four years

A small group of chronically homeless people accounted for half of all bed nights in emergency accommodation over a four year period, according to new research.

The study was conducted by a team led by Richard Waldron, lecturer in the school of natural and built environment at Queen’s University Belfast.

“Between July 2014 and December 2016 the number of individuals who sought access to emergency homeless accommodation increased by a staggering 130%, from 3,226 to 7,421 individuals,” it said.

Using data from the Dublin Region Homeless Executive’s (DRHE) Pathway Accommodation and Support System (PASS), across the four Dublin local authorities, the final dataset comprised of 377,678 contacts to the PASS system, which corresponded to 16,005 individuals.

According to the research:

“Across the full PASS dataset, 12,734 individuals were homeless for more than 2 million bed-nights during the period 2012 to 2016. While the average length of stay was 158 nights, the maximum recorded stay was 1,714 nights, indicating that some clients have been homeless for very long periods.”

Two thirds of clients were men and the average age of service users was 37 years.

The youngest recorded client was 18 while the oldest was 87 years. Two thirds of PASS users were from Ireland.

The data then looked at three groups or clusters — transitional, episodic and chronic — and found the latter accounted for the largest number of total client nights (1,000,349), or 50% of total bed-nights.

“This is despite the fact that the chronic cluster accounts for just 12% of total clients,” it said.

Some clients remained within emergency accommodation for almost the duration of the study period.

It also said: “It is worth noting that government policy has also contributed to the exacerbation of the homelessness crisis in a number of ways” — referring to reduction in spending on social housing, and subsiding private rent through HAP.

“It is likely that homeless families are increasingly sliding into patterns of chronic, long-term stays within emergency accommodation provision and as such understanding the extent of families within the system and their specific patterns of use is important in order to develop tailored responses,” it said.

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