Leading homeless charities have expressed serious concerns for the “few hundred” people who are sleeping rough on the streets in towns and cities nationwide as snow and freezing rain blanket the country.
Some 134 people are currently sleeping rough on the streets of Dublin, according the latest data released by the Dublin Region Homeless Executive (DRHE), while Focus Ireland said there was “widespread concern for the few hundred people” sleeping rough nationwide.
Met Éireann has issued status orange and yellow snow and ice warnings and has forecast the cold snap to continue until at least next Friday. Temperatures are set to fall as low as -6 degrees Celsius in the coming days.
The latest DRHE rough sleeping figure does not include recently-arrived international protection applicants (IPAs) who have not been offered State accommodation. There are 3,141 male asylum seekers without housing offers, according to Government data.
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A spokesman for the Department of Integration, which oversees the housing of asylum seekers, said on Sunday that offers of accommodation were temporarily being provided to all asylum seekers found rough sleeping through daily outreach teams. “At present, the International Protection Accommodation Service [IPAS] is able to provide accommodation to newly arrived single men for “the duration of the cold weather warning,” he said.
However, a local volunteer working directly with homeless IPAs told The Irish Times that some new arrivals were not receiving offers until late in the day and that eight men received no offer of accommodation on Friday night and were brought indoors by volunteers.
Accommodation offers are temporary, which means the men “could end up back on the streets having to go through the rough sleeper verification process for a second time,” she said.
The department spokesman also said residents of tented accommodation sites for IPAs had been moved to “temporary indoor accommodation” during the cold weather. However, residents at the tented centre in Athlone have not been moved because “no immediate facility exists”. Tents in Athlone are “weatherproofed and heated, and as part of the cold weather plan, extra arrangements are made to ensure applicants are as comfortable as possible”, he said. Before this week, nearly 800 IPAs were sleeping in State-provided tented accommodation at six sites across the country.
IPAS is “working to ensure sufficient supply of winter-appropriate accommodation for existing and newly arrived applicants over the coming weeks,” said the spokesman.
Meanwhile, the DRHE has activated its cold weather strategy which provides for a total new capacity of 192 permanent beds, said a Dublin City Council spokesman. An additional 82 beds can be activated as part of the extreme weather emergency protocol when a weather warning is triggered, he said.
Dublin outreach services are working directly with rough sleepers from 7am to 1am daily and assist any individuals they meet to take up emergency accommodation, he said. In Cork, a city council spokesman said it had “sufficient beds for accommodation during the expected adverse weather conditions”.
[ Number of homeless people passes 15,000 for first time since records beganOpens in new window ]
Tony Geoghegan, interim chief executive for Simon Communities of Ireland, said it was a “worrying time” for rough sleepers and urged Dublin-based members of the public not to walk by people sleeping on the streets but to contact the DRHE homeless freephone on 1800 707 707. People should also log into the Rough Sleeper app to flag an individual’s location with outreach teams, he said.
Mr Geoghegan cautioned that a small number of people may be reluctant to move to homeless hostels because of previous trauma “which overrides everything else”. “I know some people find it hard to get their heads around it, but you have to respect that. Some people sleeping rough are very vulnerable, some have mental health problems. Sometimes it’s a couple who don’t want to be split up and would rather stay together outside. Outreach teams just try to ensure they have dry clothing, warm bedding and medical care is available.”
Mr Geoghegan expressed frustration that “a wealthy country” continues to see record homeless figures each year. “We need more compassion and support for people who are stuck in homelessness. There are reasons they get stuck, it’s because they haven’t got the capacity to live independently. Poverty is the big issue underpinning this. That’s why we need an all-of-government approach.”
Sleeping on the streets is “not acceptable and not inevitable” and people “expect their government to put in place solutions in their new government programme to help end all forms of homelessness,” Focus Ireland director Mike Allen said.
The incoming government could not continue “sidestepping” the homelessness crisis, said Mr Allen. “What we must always remember is that it is possible to end homelessness, and the government must lead on this,” said Mr Allen. “We strongly believe there is a moral duty to ensure that the right policies are put in place to help ease this terrible human crisis and then move to end it.”
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