Homeless Accommodation Provision

Dáil Éireann Debate, Thursday - 11 June 2015

Thursday, 11 June 2015

Questions (3)

Catherine Murphy

Question:

3. Deputy Catherine Murphy asked the Minister for the Environment, Community and Local Government if he will reconvene the homelessness forum, given the fact that ever more families are finding it impossible to source even emergency accommodation and the fact that Government policy is exacerbating this trend; if he is aware that the situation in County Kildare, County Meath and County Wicklow is rapidly deteriorating; his plans to address this crisis; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [22634/15]

Oral answers (6 contributions)

Deputy Catherine Murphy

We are moving away from the rent allowance model for private rented accommodation for people on the housing list, and the housing assistance payment, HAP, and long leasing are being used by the vast majority of people. The problem is that individuals must source the accommodation and it is very precarious in the absence of a change in the environment at local government level.

Deputy Alan Kelly

Addressing the current challenges relating to homelessness is a top priority for me and my Department. I will not say there is any silver bullet or that it is easy, but we are trying every combination we can. It is not about funding. It really is about trying to ensure we can put in place all the strategies that will work. I have put in place a special task force to oversee the work of an interdisciplinary unit to source additional accommodation for homeless families.  The task force meets weekly under the guidance of the Minister of State, Deputy Coffey, and myself. My Department is in regular contact with other Departments, State agencies, local authorities and a range of stakeholders from the NGO sector relating to homelessness issues. This issue is dealt with on a daily and weekly basis in my Department and is constantly being monitored. Formal arrangements in place include the joint forum of the cross-Department team on homelessness and the national homelessness consultative committee, which met on 4 June, and the high-level homelessness policy implementation team, which last met on 15 May. This issue is also raised very regularly at meetings of the Cabinet sub-committee on social policy chaired by An Taoiseach. The level of engagement is very high.

The number of families presenting to local authorities as homeless has increased. I accept that rising rents are a major issue and we must address the issue of supply. I have already announced a suite of measures, of which the Deputy is well aware, to increase the supply of social housing. I have also established a suite of measures to help people who are vulnerable to becoming homeless. We are monitoring this constantly. We are also trying to roll out other protocols relating to intercepting people who are vulnerable.

These protocols have worked well in Dublin and have been rolled out in Cork and we are looking at rolling them out. In some cases they are managed by Threshold but it need not always be the one agency. Anyway, those protocols have worked well.

Deputy Catherine Murphy raised a query as regards the local authorities and a change in mindset. I would be interested to hear more detail on what the Deputy is offering on the matter. Certainly I can assure her that we are constantly on to the local authorities as regards dealing with this issue, providing extra funding and providing a considerable number of extra staff as well.

Deputy Catherine Murphy

The short term is the real problem. The Minister is right about rising rents and said he is dealing with this every day but I am dealing with this every day as well and from what I can see, it is not working. There is a county boundary which delineates my area from the Dublin area. The tenancy protection environment in the Dublin area is very different from what we experience. I see vulnerable groups finding it impossible to secure accommodation. I see families being broken up and cases where one person in a family is sleeping in the car while the children are being farmed out and do not get to school. Real damage is being done. If we are moving to a different model, we cannot have a situation where people have the entire responsibility to source the accommodation themselves, because some people will simply find it impossible.

We find that people are being moved away from resources, for example, children with special needs. When they have to move, very often the resources cannot move with them. What I am seeing in my area is pure chaos. There is an urgency about this issue and about extending what is available in Dublin to other areas.

Deputy Alan Kelly

We have made a number of changes. We have put substantial amounts of funding into it and I hope the Deputy acknowledges that. There is no silver bullet as regards the necessity to provide extra supply. The funding is in place up to 2020 and it is a substantial amount. We have works programmes with the local authorities for social housing. That work is ongoing, as everyone is aware. However, there is a time lag.

The Deputy referred to the commuter areas. I agree that there are specific pressures there which need to be addressed in a different way, and we are looking at addressing them. We have changed protocols as regards the volume of accommodation provided and prioritised for people who are vulnerable and homeless. This is something we review on a monthly basis. We are looking at extending the intervention mechanism to which I referred earlier to commuter areas because of the fact the pressures in many of the commuter areas, in particular, in Kildare, Meath and Wicklow, are similar to the issues faced by many people in Dublin. This is something we are addressing through the local authorities as well. There is an increase in the prioritisation of funding as regards how we can turn around stock quickly in the case of voids and in other areas.

Deputy Catherine Murphy

I acknowledge resources are being provided but much of that is medium-term. If someone arrives at my office tomorrow morning, I cannot say to him or her there is no silver bullet. He or she will want a solution tomorrow if facing homelessness on Monday, and often that is the case. Not a day goes by that I do not have people in my office with these problems. This has been the case now for a year or more.

One of the problems is the definition of homelessness. In many cases, local authorities take it to be what was deemed as traditional homelessness - I hate to use that term. Anyway, a mindset change is needed because there is a different housing model. People are not being listed as homeless or at risk of homelessness in some local authorities because of that definition. There needs to be a change in the culture, arrangements and rights to ensure that people have a right to shelter. I am not suggesting that they should have fantastic houses in the locations they want necessarily, but the basic point is that they have a right to shelter. A change in mindset and institutional change is needed.

Deputy Alan Kelly

I will offer two observations, or comments. I deal with this as a Deputy rather than as a Minister as well. The priority is to keep people in their homes and to put in place as many intervention mechanisms as possible to do that. We are continuously rolling those out. We have 80 directions in respect of homelessness and trying to keep people in their homes. There is no one-size-fits-all approach. Some of the tactics - for want of a better phrase - work in some areas and do not in others. It is my desire to extend the protocols to which I referred.

The issue raised by Deputy Catherine Murphy on the mindset of local authority staff and management on this issue would be a concern of mine if I believed it to be widespread across local authorities, but I do not detect that. On the basis of what Deputy Murphy has said, I will re-emphasise this. There is a differentiation between what many people see as homelessness, that is, those who are, unfortunately, sleeping on the streets, etc. and the new homeless, including families, etc. A differentiation applies. Obviously, we have dealt fairly quickly with many of the issues with the rough sleepers, but the prioritisation, without a shadow of a doubt, now relates to vulnerable families and people like that. The idea is to try to have the protocols in place to intercept them. That is the priority and that is what we are pushing across the local authorities. I can assure Deputy Murphy of that.