New initiatives are needed to tackle Ireland’s homeless crisis

Eviction bans, long-term leasing, and upgrading older buildings would help the homeless crisis

The long-term leasing scheme has had a positive and meaningful impact, says Pat Doyle.

The July homeless statistics released recently show that the number of people officially accessing homeless services has reached the highest ever recorded. Yet, we can’t lose hope and must redouble our effort to find ways to stabilise and reduce the number of people impacted by homelessness. Some of the choices we need to take to do so may be less than perfect.

One of the main reasons why we saw such a large reduction in the number of people in homelessness during the pandemic was due to the emergency powers that prohibited the eviction of vulnerable tenants during this period. We need to see some form of a moratorium on evictions re-introduced.