Ms Rebecca Keatinge:

I thank the committee for the invitation to present today. We warmly welcome the focus of the committee on child and family homelessness. Mercy Law Resource Centre, MLRC, is an independent law centre and registered charity. Our principal focus is the provision of free legal advice and representation to individuals and families who are homeless or at risk of homelessness.

Since 2015, an increasing number of vulnerable families have accessed our services. Overall in 2018, Mercy Law advised more than 720 individuals and families, of whom 244 were experiencing homelessness. At present, 57% of our clients are families with minor children who are homeless and 77% of our clients are of ethnic minorities.

Building on our substantive submission and other Mercy Law reports before the committee, I will highlight a number of key concerns and related recommendations. Since 2015, Mercy Law has frequently engaged with families who were refused emergency accommodation, with their only options then being to sleep in parks, cars, uninhabitable caravans, chronically overcrowded or unsafe conditions or in Garda stations. Mercy Law sees at first hand the devastating impact on families and their children of improper refusals of emergency accommodation.

At present, there is no strict legal obligation on housing authorities to provide emergency accommodation. There is a discretion but no duty. Recent High Court decisions have afforded broad discretion to housing authorities with respect to the homeless assessment. It is our position that the wide margin of discretion afforded to housing authorities in the current legal framework does not adequately protect homeless families with minor children. Mercy Law continues to call for protection of the right to housing in the Constitution. Specifically as part of a shift to a legal rights-based approach, we recommend tightening the statutory provisions contained in the Housing Act 1988 to eliminate the statutory discretion and impose a duty on the housing authority to provide such emergency accommodation.

We also raise a most urgent concern in respect of the provision of one-night-only emergency accommodation. MLRC frequently assists families placed in one-night-only emergency accommodation, including those with very young children, children with special needs, new mothers and their newborn babies discharged from maternity hospitals and victims of domestic violence. On numerous occasions MLRC experiences first hand the deep distress and chaos of families placed in chronically unstable emergency accommodation. Families must move every day. They frequently cannot access their accommodation until 8 p.m. and must leave by 9.30 a.m. Families have no secure place to go during the day and spend prolonged periods in shopping centres, in parks, on the streets or on buses. Families of no access to cooking or laundry facilities. They ordinarily cannot register their children for school or access primary healthcare because they do not have a fixed address or stable accommodation.

As of 1 June, MLRC understands that 80 families were in one-night-only accommodation, an increase on the figure we understood to be 50 as of December last. MLRC has, without success, sought information on the legal basis and reasons that some families are placed in accommodation of this kind while others have rolling placements in more stable accommodation. This affects families that are on the housing list and those that are not. In our experience it affects minority families disproportionately. A family in this type of accommodation cannot meet its basic needs let alone resolve its long-term housing issues. It compounds the chaos and distress of homelessness. This type of accommodation provision is not fit for purpose. MLRC believes that it may expose families and their children to inhuman and degrading treatment of such severity as to engage Article 3 of the European Convention on Human Rights. It is also observed that there may be discriminatory practice such that ethnic minorities are disproportionately affected.

Our strong and unqualified recommendation to the committee is for a cessation of the provision of one-night-only emergency accommodation to homeless families and provision of stable placements in suitable temporary accommodation for such families. We also call for transparency as to why families are placed in such chronically unstable accommodation and also call for an equality review to be carried out by Dublin Regional Homeless Executive and housing authorities to identify and address any potentially discriminatory practices.

We concur with the committee's other guests in respect of self-accommodation provision, which we see as failing the most vulnerable families. This type of provision is made to families across the board with little or no regard to their individual needs or vulnerabilities. Vulnerable families, including, in particular, ethnic minority, non-Irish national and larger families, face insurmountable barriers to accessing self-accommodation. They do not have the language skills or resources to identify potential hotel or bed and breakfast accommodation bookings and-or the size of their families mean that hotels and bed and breakfast establishments are not a feasible option. Bookings, if achieved, are insecure and unstable and families must frequently move, which interferes with access to education, healthcare and social and family stability. MLRC agree with the Irish Human Rights and Equality Commission that families should not have to source their own emergency accommodation. We support the call by Dr. Muldoon for an end to self-accommodation. We also recommend the issuing of regulations by the Minister to specify and restrict the type of emergency accommodation provision in which families may be place, therefore ensuring its suitability and adequacy.

It is stated in Rebuilding Ireland that by the middle of 2017 hotels would be used for emergency accommodation purposes in very limited circumstances. Yet, as of February last, over half of homeless families in Dublin remain in commercial hotels. We regularly engage with families that have been in inappropriate emergency accommodations for excessive periods. Very recently we engaged with a family that had been in a hotel for 28 months. Last week we had a call from a family that had been in hotel accommodation for three and a half years. That hotel and bed and breakfast accommodation, even for short periods, is unacceptable and inflicts damage on families has been established and is widely accepted. We need to see the end of reliance on commercial hotels and bed and breakfast establishments as a form of emergency accommodation for families. As previous speakers have done, we call for a limit on the time that families spend in unsuitable emergency accommodation such as commercial hotels.

We share the concern that hubs present a risk of the institutionalisation and normalising of family homelessness. We would like to add, on the basis of our casework experience, specific concerns about family hubs that are additional to those already articulated.. There is a clear lack of transparency regarding access to family hubs and transitional accommodation. MLRC has been informed by two housing authorities that there are no published criteria or process for accessing family hubs. As one housing officer indicated, identification of a family for placement in a hub will depend on that family being in the mind of the housing officer. Our clients are rarely in the position to put themselves in the minds of housing officers. We question the equality of access to family hubs. With a relatively low number of spaces - as already stated, the vast majority of families, well over half, are in commercial hotels - there are substantial delays in any placement in such family hubs. Hubs are generally not configured to accommodate larger families. We have concerns, these are reflected in the report from the Office of the Ombudsman for Children, regarding the variation in standards in family hubs. We have particular concerns about the fact that several former commercial hotels that have been effectively rebranded as family hubs. We call for a shift away from family hubs to the provision of transitional, own-door accommodation. We recommend the publication of accessibility criteria and procedures for accessing family hubs and transitional accommodation placements. We share the call for the creation of an independent body to conduct regular inspections of homeless services.

MLRC welcomes the recognition in Rebuilding Ireland that families with children presenting as homeless require a separate and distinct response. Yet a common theme in our concerns, as presented here, is the failure of housing authorities to recognise and meet the particular needs and take account of the vulnerabilities of homeless families. MLRC has previously received assurances from the Dublin Regional Homeless Executive that mechanisms are in place to identify and provide supports to vulnerable families. However, it is our experience that these mechanisms are failing those families. To remedy this, we support the proposed amendment to the Housing Act to place a statutory obligation on housing authorities to regard the best interests of children as paramount, have regard to the needs of the family unit and to make provision of suitable accommodation to that family unit to ensure its effective functioning.

MLRC believes in the inherent dignity of each human person and sees such dignity frequently violated in the deep trauma and distress of homeless families. This crisis calls for urgent and progressive measures to meaningfully address such trauma, restore dignity to those impacted upon by this housing crisis and minimise the harm currently being inflicted on homeless families.

I thank the committee and we look forward to engaging with members.