Richard Boyd Barrett (Dún Laoghaire, People Before Profit Alliance) | Oireachtas source

The National Youth Council of Ireland, NYCI ,report suggests that half of young people are very unhappy with their housing situation and more than half feel their mental health is seriously being affected by this issue. They have good reason to feel that way. I will give two examples. This week, I met a family who are being evicted. They are a working family who got a notice to quit on grounds of sale. They are in receipt of the HAP now but they are being evicted. If they are made homeless and put into emergency accommodation, they will not be entitled to HAP because they are over the threshold. If you are on HAP, your income can go up because you are working and your rent increases a bit. It is the same in social housing. If you are made homeless because you are over the threshold, when you need the help most, you are told you cannot have any of it and are not entitled to social housing either, so you are trapped in social housing. It is crazy.

I know another working mother who, for similar reasons, has been in emergency accommodation for four years with her son, in one-bedroom accommodation. Those sorts of anomalies have to be addressed because working people who have done nothing wrong are now getting trapped because they are a bit over certain thresholds in a hopeless situation. They are homeless and have no chance. Incidentally, the only accommodation available to them is €3,000 a month. Their combined income after tax is €48,000, so to pay the rent that is being charged in the area without HAP support, they would be paying 75% of their income on the rents that are available.

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