Homeless charity calls for more resources with 18,000 people in emergency accommodation

Depaul CEO David Carroll said homelessness was directly linked to the lack of affordable housing, and that there is an urgent need for more single-unit accommodation options. Picture: David Doyle

A leading homeless charity has said more resources are desperately needed to tackle a crisis that now has more than 18,000 people on the island of Ireland in emergency accommodation — and with a quarter of its clients last year women, sparking calls for specific female-only services.

The latest Depaul annual report shows it supported 3,670 people — 2,848 adults and 822 children — through its services last year, including the birth of eight babies to people it was working with.

It supported 681 women in homelessness across the south and 291 women in the North, including helping 141 women to move out of homelessness into suitable and secure accommodation.

The fact a quarter of all clients were women prompted Depaul to call for women-only services and for more resources in general, decrying a shortage of available staff at a time when 10,568 people are homeless in Ireland and another 8,120 in the North.

David Carroll, chief executive of Depaul, said: "The need for our services has never been greater and we need to continue to treat homelessness as part of our public health response so we can develop a coordinated approach to reach a sustainable solution."

He said the lack of affordable housing was directly linked to homelessness and added there was an urgent need for more single-unit accommodation options.

He said the level of expenditure on homeless services needed to be maintained at pandemic levels or higher, and said there was "a chronic staff shortage across the sector and we are unable to facilitate the numbers entering into homelessness".

Urgent action is needed — we are working around the clock to respond to one of the worst homelessness crisis we’ve seen in recent years and we can’t do it alone." 

Niamh Thornton, senior services manager at Depaul, said: "There are currently insufficient services available specifically for single women who are homeless in both Ireland and Northern Ireland."

Meanwhile, a new report suggested Ireland needed to broaden its definition of homelessness, as other EU countries have done, to try and tackle the issue.

The report, From Rebuilding Ireland to Housing for All: international and Irish lessons for tackling homelessness, was launched on Monday and found the shortage of affordable and social housing supply was the primary cause of homelessness and that this housing shortage also limited existing policy in preventing and ending homelessness.

It also found people who experienced homelessness reported they found services were uncoordinated and "in need of improvement" and information about those services was "inconsistent". 

The report found "the standardisation of responses seen in strategies like that of Finland or the (distinct) legislative frameworks of Scotland and Wales may be useful in addressing this issue".

The report, which involved Cope Galway, Focus Ireland, the Jesuit Centre for Faith and Justice, the Mercy Law Resource Centre, the Simon Communities of Ireland, and the Society of Saint Vincent de Paul, also referenced the need for better accommodation options for women.

The report authors were Isabel Baptista, Professor Dennis P Culhane, Professor Nicholas Pleace and Professor Eoin O’Sullivan.