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Last night’s #RTEInvestigates told harrowing stories of three people who found themselves with no alternative but to sleep in a doorway, a tent by the canal, and a utilities room in an underground carpark. It also told other stories, maybe less explicitly. 1/
It raised questions over who is in charge of the State’s response to homelessness. It is noteworthy that a Minister issued a circular to local authorities and the DHRE easing the “local connection rule”, and it was roundly ignored. https://bit.ly/3nXPKHB 2/
This shift of power is hardly surprising & ultimately of the Department of Housing’s own making. In past years, the Department has shifted responsibility for homeless accommodation to local authorities, bar the administrative task of publishing monthly and quarterly reports. 3/
(This would be no bad thing if the local authorities were fully equipped with the resources, authority, and political capital to apply their local knowledge and expertise to respond contextually but…) 4/
Legitimate requests for additional information, funding amounts, or inspection reports from the Dept are redirected to DHRE or local authority. The final rebuff comes with the oft-repeated appeal to “commercial sensitivities” or “internal documents.” https://www.thejournal.ie/homeless-money-3804327-Jan2018/ /5
The political advantage of this fragmentation is it shielded the Department and deflected damage on the Minister as the homeless crises intensified. Now, even simple requests from the Minister to place people in available, open beds are disregarded. https://dublininquirer.com/2020/12/02/rough-sleepers-in-the-capital-refused-beds-because-they-re-not-from-dublin /6
Viewers were shocked by the manner in how homeless people were spoken to when trying to book a bed. I don’t imagine that this was a once-off isolated occurrence. But it may be more helpful to consider this interaction from a structural perspective /7
In the 60s, Micheal Sweetman, a Jesuit, spoke publicly of a ‘social sickness caused by the housing situation’ suggesting that people are shaped by their social spheres. We're in the 8th year of this generation’s homelessness crisis, with no end in sight.
This has a cost. /8
This has a cost. /8
We, the wider public, become immune to the human suffering. For those civil servants and staff working on homeless services, a hardness can develop. People who are homeless in any country, naturally gravitate to the capital or regional city where services are concentrated. /9
To insist on the strict application of an administrative rule, to refuse an available bed, is to insert cruelty into a system where many have already suffered neglect, abuse, and hardship. https://dublininquirer.com/2020/12/09/local-connection-rule-makes-little-sense-says-homeless-advocate /10
Talk of putting together a strategy to end homelessness is premature. Before this, the Minister and the Department need to take responsibility for homelessness in order to implement any over-arching plan with local authorities and the voluntary sector. /11
The JCFJ has made some concrete proposals which the Minister and Department could incorporate into their housing philosophy in order to end the housing affordability and homelessness crisis. http://www.jcfj.ie/wp-content/uploads/2019/07/Rebuilding_Ireland_Final.pdf /12
