Greg DalyThe homelessness crisis is spreading well beyond the capital, a charity at the forefront of helping hard-pressed families has warned.
According to Focus Ireland’s Roughan MacNamara there are now a constant number of between 70 and 80 families in Dublin becoming homeless every month, and, he warned, “this situation is starting to develop in other cities around the country”.
Focus Ireland has launched a new campaign to raise vital funds to help victims of the crisis.
The campaign highlights how 800 children and their families became homeless in the first 10 months of the year, with the number of people sleeping rough in Dublin having risen 20% during the same period.
The launch coincided with new figures showing that 72 families became homeless in October alone.
Explaining that Focus Ireland depends on private donations and corporate sponsorship for a third of its annual budget, he said the weeks before Christmas are an especially important time for donations. “The demand for services is consistently rising,” he said.
While welcoming the Government’s recently announced rent stability package, he said rent supplement levels need to be raised as the vast majority of families who become homeless do so for purely economic reasons, and “the rent supplement is out of kilter with market realities”.
Meanwhile, The Peter McVerry Trust has likewise launched a Christmas funding appeal, seeking to raise an extra €1 million to cope with extra demand placed on its services in 2015. According to its annual report, it provided 34% more people with emergency accommodation last year than in 2013.
