Dáil debates
Thursday, 16 November 2017
Topical Issue Debate
Homeless Persons Supports
2:25 pm
John Lahart (Dublin South West, Fianna Fail)
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The Minister for Housing, Planning and Local Government, Deputy Murphy, contacted me earlier to say he was unable to take this Topical Issue and I am grateful to the Minister of State at the Department of Agriculture, Food and the Marine, Deputy Doyle, for standing in for him. I ask the Minister of State to bring the points I make to the attention of the Minister. I appreciate that Ministers often find it difficult to appear in the House on Thursdays.
There has been much discussion of the topic this week. I am anxious to raise it because there is still a stigma and stereotype around homelessness and a belief that it only happens to marginalised people. That was evidenced by some views expressed this week. The first time I became aware of a homelessness issue involving a family in my constituency was three years ago when a school principal contacted me to say a family who had lived in a middle class area of my local electoral ward of Rathfarnham had been given notice to quit. That was long before the introduction of the new rules and regulations governing notices to quit. The family had spent the previous night sleeping in a car. All Members have heard of such experiences. That was my first time to encounter it. It was an ordinary working family who had been given notice to quit by their landlord, who wished to sell. They tried to rent a home in close proximity to where they were living and where their children were going to school. They were not marginalised people. Another constituent of mine, who I previously assisted to find a home, has been given notice that he will have to leave his apartment by 11 February. Although support services are available, those examples show how a person, if he or she does not get accommodation, can become homeless overnight. These are not people who were traditionally on the street and they do not have any mental or behavioural issues. It can happen to anybody.
Schools are often the first point of contact for families who face homelessness. I had an hour-long conversation about the issue with a constituent of mine who is the principal of a school in the constituency of my colleague, Deputy Curran. She pointed out the difficulty in accessing services experienced by people who have never had to interact with services, their complete ignorance of the system and unawareness of where to go or who the first point of contact ought to be. She said that advocates are needed to assist people. She discovered that through trial and error. She missed a cumulative almost two weeks of school through trying to find safe spaces for some families to stay. She used an interesting phrase: when a family does not know what to do, what do they do? She discussed the need for the system to help mentor people. She had to find such help for families who came to her for assistance. In one instance, she rang 55 hotels in one day, seeking accommodation for a Dublin-based family. She finally got a place for them in a hotel in Mullingar. Dublin City Council was not willing to accept that as accommodation for the family because it was not in Dublin but she finally persuaded them to do so. At one stage, she was thirty-fifth on a list of callers holding with Dublin City Council. She was advocating for a family.
I ask the Minister of State, Deputy Doyle, to ask the Minister, Deputy Murphy, and the Minister of State, Deputy English, what a family should do when they become homeless and do not know what to do. Public representatives know that the local council should be contacted, such as South Dublin County Council for those in my constituency, and that people should go to the council's housing desk. However, although Members know that, many people threatened by homelessness may not be computer literate. How do such people access a hotel room or find out what hotels are available? We make many assumptions that need to be challenged. An information campaign is needed at a minimum. I wish to highlight the need for advocacy for those who do not have a voice.
Andrew Doyle (Wicklow, Fine Gael)
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I thank Deputy Lahart for raising this topical matter. I assure him that I will convey his message to the Minister and Minister of State. Although I have a prepared script that will be read into the record, we can deal with some of the issues raised in the time available for supplementary questions. It is very important that the Deputy raised the issue of advocacy.
We are facing a crisis in homelessness in this country. The Minister, Deputy Murphy, acknowledged that earlier this year and that is why resolving the crisis and helping every individual and family with compassion and care remains a priority for the Government.
Local authorities provide a wide range of services to those experiencing homelessness and have wide and flexible statutory powers to assist or make arrangements for the accommodation of homeless persons. To support that, homeless funding is provided by the Department of Housing, Planning and Local Government under section 10 of the Housing Act 1988. In addition, housing authorities provide funding from within their own resources.
As regards homeless services in Dublin, the Dublin Region Homeless Executive's central placement service at Parkgate Street provides a range of such services to homeless people. Homeless individuals or families can meet with a staff member at the placement service who will consider their needs, assist them to access accommodation as required and advise them in regard to accessing other support services.
Families or individuals at risk of homelessness usually begin to engage with homeless services before their existing accommodation becomes unavailable, whether that be days, weeks or months before they become homeless. That allows the Dublin Region Homeless Executive time to consider the various requirements of the household concerned and to tailor supports and consider accommodation options. In many instances, the homeless executive has successfully assisted those who engage at an early stage. So far this year in the Dublin region, almost 600 households who engaged with the homeless executive at an early stage have been prevented from entering emergency accommodation by securing a new private rented tenancy under the housing assistance payment.
The Dublin Region Homeless Executive will also work with those presenting to consider if they are eligible for social housing and assist in the submission of an application if appropriate. It will also engage with the landlord on the family's behalf if there are issues that advocacy can assist. A State-funded prevention service is also available through Threshold which can provide support and advice to those at risk of homelessness and examine any notices to quit they might have received for validity. However, often prevention is not possible and temporary accommodation will be required. The Dublin Region Homeless Executive's freefone helpline operates nightly until after 1 a.m., and anyone seeking emergency assistance out-of-hours can be accommodated through this service.
The Minister, Deputy Murphy, spoke to each of these issues yesterday in the Dáil. Where a family seeks homelessness services for the first time out-of-hours, they will be referred to the Focus Ireland family homeless action team, which provides the contact point under a funded service level agreement with the Dublin Region Homeless Executive. The action team will consider the presenting family's immediate needs and work with them to secure hotel accommodation for that night. The next day a more thorough assessment of the individual family's requirements will be conducted. Following this assessment and information session, the family will be allocated a case worker who will work with the family throughout their homelessness episode, with a view to ensuring they benefit from the available supports.
State-funded services are also available on a nightly basis to individuals who are sleeping rough. A Focus Ireland-McVerry Trust consortium is fully funded to provide a nightly Housing First service which engages rough sleepers on a proactive basis in an attempt to get individuals to access accommodation or consider entering a Housing First tenancy. Once an individual or family engages with homelessness services, the homeless executive will work tirelessly to seek solutions, and it is achieving significant success in this regard. In the first six months of this year, the Dublin housing authorities assisted 1,400 adults to exit homelessness services into independent tenancies. The Deputy can be assured that the Minister, Deputy Murphy's Department and the homeless inter-agency group, established in September of this year following the housing summit, will continue to work with all local authorities and stakeholders to address the very serious homelessness issues that this country faces.
2:35 pm
John Lahart (Dublin South West, Fianna Fail)
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I thank the Minister of State for his response. Things have changed and moved on. It is not so long ago that someone threatened with homelessness could not act until they were actually homeless, so there has been a big step forward, which I acknowledge. One of the key phrases in the Minister's response is "once an individual or family engages with the homelessness services". What I am asking him is what happens to these individuals and families if they do not know who can advocate for them. In the case of the school principal advocating for families, it was a voyage of discovery for her. One of her first ports of call was the Citizens Information bureau, which any citizen in the country would think is a useful place to go, but it does not advocate for people who are homeless. She found Focus Ireland absolutely fantastic. However, she was put in the position of making, as I said, 55 calls a day and waiting thirty-fifth in a telephone queue with Dublin City Council, eventually securing a hotel in Mullingar, having tried every hotel in Dublin. The city council would not accept it. The council finally accepted it because she pushed the matter. She then drove the family to Mullingar. This is on top of all her additional responsibilities as a school principal.
It is that gap in the process to which I refer. Some people are aware of the services available. The second constituent of mine I mentioned, the young man, knew to whom to reach out, but what if one does not know to whom to reach out? We are essentially talking about providing information campaigns, even on billboards, telling people that if they find themselves threatened with homelessness, these are the steps they can take.
Our clinics are full of people who are terrified. They are now beginning to say there is a chance that in six months' time their landlord may decide to sell or refurbish the house or whatever and they are asking what they should do then. They did not ask this six months ago. People out there are anxious. They need to know the first steps they must take. I hope the Minister and the Department take this on board.
Andrew Doyle (Wicklow, Fine Gael)
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I accept the Deputy's comments. There is a network of routes through public representatives, councillors, Deputies and Senators, apart from schoolteachers and other people who have front-line engagement with families all the time. There should be awareness of all the initiatives. There are ambitious targets and an increased budget for 2018. However, it is like anything else: if there is an airlock in the system that stops the information flowing and people do not access the most efficient route to get their support, through the likes of Parkgate Street in Dublin's case, people encounter undue distress, delay and frustration. The Deputy's example of the schoolteacher is a case in point. That school principal has much work to do and, in fairness, it seems unreasonable to expect that to be part of her role. In any case, had she been tooled with the knowledge of where to go to, she probably could have short-circuited much of the family's and her frustration and anxiety.
We should state on the record that we all have housing and homelessness and dealing with it on the top of our agenda. No one has a monopoly over compassion or care; I think we all care. The best way we as public representatives can show our care is to work together. If there are problems with advocacy, navigation and awareness such as the Deputy has identified, we should take that on board. I will ensure that the Minister takes it on board and seeks to address it. In theory, it should be simple - to let people know where the services are available and how they work. There is a freefone number until 1 a.m., etc. Let us work on this, and if there are other blips in the system, let us iron them out and fix them in order that we can streamline this. We have much work to do. There are many resources being pumped into this but they need to be effective.