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.

One way in which the Government could stem the flow of people into homelessness is by introducing an annual, seasonal ban on evictions. In France there has been a long-standing policy “La trêve hivernale” that bans evictions from November 1 to March 31. In Seattle, there is a policy that places extra protections on vulnerable families renting in the private market with children 18 or under to help them keep their homes during the school year. Such policies clearly recognise the evidence that shows the unavoidable negative impact that homelessness has on people, be they children or adults.

Safe from homelessness

The introduction of similar measures here to run from October to March each year could protect tenants who have genuinely sought and can demonstrate their efforts to secure alternative, affordable housing options and keep them safe from homelessness for longer, and perhaps give them the space to find alternative housing.

Stopping people coming into homelessness is of course critical to how we go about tackling the issue but on its own will only lead to a stabilisation of the numbers. Opening doors for people to find pathways to housing is the most challenging piece of the jigsaw. There are very positive and strong indicators that housing delivery is moving in the right direction in recent months, but concerns over the rising costs of construction materials, interest rate increases, and wider economic uncertainty are leading to projects being delayed or paused entirely.

If we are to secure the volume and type of properties we need, especially to tackle homelessness, then there is no way we can, in the current space, exclude long-term leasing. 

Don’t get me wrong, the priority and the preference must be State-led social housing delivery by local authorities and approved housing bodies in the form of construction and renewal housing projects, but when we don’t yet have enough of that type of housing and when private rental is becoming less affordable — or is simply unavailable — can we really afford to ignore opportunities to house people via long-term leasing?

While many commentators have criticised the long-term leasing scheme in terms of value for money, it has had a positive and meaningful impact and brings about economic and social benefits beyond the simple “how much is it costing us” narrative.

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When compared with the housing assistance payment, it’s clear that long-term leasing is better and more cost-effective for people to be offered housing through. It gives greater security, more stability, and the chance of a person, couple, or family really settling and integrating into their community because they can in reality stay up to 25 years in one place. Long-term leasing is also more favourable when you compare the spending needed to accommodate people in hotels and other forms of emergency accommodation for a year versus the rent you pay on a long-term lease apartment over the same period.

Vacant building stock

The Peter McVerry Trust strongly believes that we need to bring back leasing for the remainder of 2022 and all of 2023 and that it primarily deals with the re-use of existing vacant building stock in areas of homeless need. Such a model would enable us to deliver new homes for schemes like Housing First, reduce the levels of vacancy, and increase housing output with much lower levels of carbon emissions than new-build schemes. Homes via such a scheme can be created more quickly by reusing and upgrading existing buildings and availing of exempted development status where appropriate. These projects also by and large deliver mainly one-bedroom homes. This targeted scheme should be introduced to coincide with the introduction of the winter eviction pause and so would expire at the end of March 2023. The pause on evictions of vulnerable households and the accelerated delivery of one-bedroom homes would lead to a substantial and important reduction in homelessness.

While these may not be the preferred way of many stakeholders to tackle homelessness, we have to remember that at the end of the day we have a rising number of people who are in crisis and who are suffering the negative impacts of homelessness. They need a home and it’s incumbent upon us to find solutions as quickly and effectively as we can with the tools at our disposal.

Pat Doyle is the CEO of Peter McVerry Trust