Peter expressed the growing concern among IMPACT members, who are working in both Dublin City Council and in voluntary homeless services, that the funding allocation for homeless services will be insufficient to meet the demand for services through to the end of 2015. Reports indicate a significant shortfall in funding as the total estimated cost for services for the year is €68m. The funding allocation for 2015 is just €37.1m.

“The growing concern among our members that are delivering these services is that the necessary funds will run out just as we enter the critical winter period” he said.

Peter added that the numbers becoming homeless since the start of the year have continued to grow, and there is a particularly worrying growth in the number of children and families who are becoming homeless each month. “It is largely due to this unprecedented surge in family homelessness that such a shortfall has emerged” he said.

Read the full letter HERE.

Market intervention needed

IMPACT has said that Government intervention in a ‘chaotic’ private rental market is one of a number of necessary measures needed to address the current homelessness crisis.

Speaking at the Irish Congress of Trade Union’s biennial conference in Ennis, County Clare, in early July, IMPACT organiser Joe O’Connor said that a range of solutions are necessary to address the current housing shortage.

The union’s motion to conference, which was unanimously supported by delegates, calls for a coordinated plan to ensure housing provision, an end to homelessness and adequate security of tenure, including the regulation of rents through an indexation system similar to systems in use in other EU countries.

Joe explained that the indexation approach links any rent increases to the consumer price index (CPI).

“These operate successfully in many countries such as Denmark, Belgium and Switzerland, which in different ways offer a degree of contractual certainty and security of tenure which hard-pressed Irish tenants desperately need to prevent many more becoming homeless.

“In Germany, the ‘Mietspiegel’ rent index policy controls rent increases at 15% over 3 years, which in practice led to increases of less than 5% between 2000 and 2012, at the same time as unregulated prices in France doubled during this period,” he said.

Joe said that this type of approach could guarantee landlord’s market rents at the beginning of a new tenancy, and prevent them from exploiting market conditions through proper regulation. He added, “Any suggestion that we’re powerless to intervene in the rental market to protect the most vulnerable in our society is defeatist and unacceptable. Every week we defer decisive action pushes more and more families into homelessness.”