With hostels full to capacity on most nights, the Government has been accused by the main charities dealing with homelessness of failing to get to grips with the problems.
The Simon Community, Focus Ireland, Threshold and the Society of St Vincent de Paul have made submissions to an independent review of the Government's programme to tackle homelessness. The programme - Homelessness: An Integrated Strategy (HAIS) - was published in May 2000. It was the first national strategy to address homelessness and established a partnership between the statutory and voluntary sectors on the issue.
While the four charities agree the problem of rough-sleeping has been all but eliminated, they say emergency accommodation, such as hostels and bed and breakfast, is full to capacity.
"A shift in focus is now needed to ensure that the housing needs of people who are homeless becomes integral to mainstream planning," says the Simon Community. A lack of affordable housing and transitional housing is causing enormous difficulties for people wishing to move on from crisis accommodation.
The Simon Community describe the lack of affordable accommodation "particularly for single people" as "critical".
Threshold says: "The long-term efficiency of using private providers as a means of supplying additional emergency accommodation is questionable and unsustainable."
It calls for the monies that are being put into such emergency accommodation to be spent on "additional social housing units" and on programmes assisting homeless people make the transition to independent living in rented accommodation.
Focus Ireland says the strategy cannot be said to be working unless a formal strategy to prevent homelessness is integrated into it. "The Homeless Preventative Strategy (2002) was a welcome development but there is very little evidence that it has succeeded or that it has made as positive an impact as initially envisaged," it says. The HPS was drawn up with the aim of assisting people leaving such institutions as prisons and care facilities in accessing housing.
All charities call for a promise to provide multi-annual funding to be delivered.
"The continued lack of multi-annual funding across a range of homeless services is a significant failure of current homeless policy and adds to the difficulties in developing quality service provision appropriate to the needs of service users," says Focus Ireland.
Focus, like the others, calls for an increase in the cap on rent supplement "to reflect the real cost of renting". Threshold calls this cap on the amount a local authority will pay towards a person's rent - currently €115 per week in Dublin - as a "key obstacle" to people who want to move from emergency to private rented accommodation. It says the average weekly cost of a bedsit in Dublin is €121.
The charity says a survey of rent supplement recipients in Cork "reveals significant numbers of people paying 'top-ups' to landlords from their social welfare payments . . . forcing them to forgo other basic necessities".
It calls on the Government to adopt "as a matter of urgency" a National Economic and Social Council recommendation that 73,000 social housing units be provided by 2012.
