Housing agency helped 183 families with emergency accommodation last year

Focus Ireland said it helped a record number of 1,790 households to avoid homelessness or leave homelessness. Picture: Yui Mok/PA Wire

The Respond Housing Agency helped 183 families with emergency accommodation and support last year — including 184 children aged five or younger, 25 pregnant women, and nine people with new-born babies.

The organisation, which launches its annual report today, said it has now supported 486 families since it opened a homeless hub service in 2016. The average length of stay in Respond’s family homeless service last year was 6.7 months.

Last year Respond also completed 357 new homes and began a further 717 homes onsite and increased its number of social homes by 9% to 4,056. It is still on track to deliver on its targets for this year, despite the impact of the pandemic, it says.

Writing in the report, John O'Connor, chairperson and Declan Dunne, CEO said: "2020 is a year like no other but notwithstanding Covid-19 we remain confident that we will meet our target of increasing the number of homes we deliver by 2,500 over the lifetime of our Strategic Plan 2019-2023."

Meanwhile, Focus Ireland said it helped a record number of 1,790 households to avoid homelessness or leave homelessness last year. That figure includes 1,150 households which Focus Ireland helped support out of homelessness and 640 households where the charity’s interventions avoided them becoming homeless in the first place. 

In its annual report, the organisation said of the 1,150 households supported out of homelessness, 810 were families with children, a 62% increase compared with more than 500 the previous year.

Focus Ireland CEO Pat Dennigan said: "Homelessness and the housing crisis were the one of the main issues for voters in February’s general election. This message must not be lost during the Covid-19 crisis."