"More Emergency Accommodation Needed In Clare" Amid Record Homeless Numbers

0:00not at all. If you look back to March 23 when they lifted the eviction ban, everyone was signing for the homelessness figures are going to increase and hey, here we are three years later and thousands, thousands more people are homeless. And I also noticed there is not many figures for rough sleepers as a mention of them in Dublin, but the people who were either sleeping rough, sleeping on couches, sleeping in cars, getting nightbosses, they're not mentioned at all. And those figures I know are going up. And of course, you have been running a mobile homeless shower service for some time in NS. Have you noticed your presentations increasing week on week? Yes, I did. Yes. I mean, it's not just that people are finding out about the services, people are presenting themselves that you wouldn't expect. If you know what I mean, people are coming to me saying, I know they've been sleeping in a car and they'd like to help the service as well. Yeah, more and more people and more and more people are talking about that are other people needing help as well. It looks like the government is going to have to examine

1:02more short term emergency accommodation. Of course, the only feasible long run solution to this is just to build more housing. But if you own it from your point of view, you've been a campaigner in the past as well, what would you look to be done about this? Because with the best will in the world, we're not going to put a roof over 17,000 people's heads tomorrow or next week. Exactly. Now, first off, we definitely, as you said, we definitely need more emergency accommodation. We also need more frontline services, sharing facilities, storage facilities for people who are living rough sleeping. Now, also, you've got to remember that when someone becomes homeless, you actually become a victim, not because you're vulnerable on the streets, but you've actually become a victim of the governance broken promises. And once you're a victim, you need support. So when if and when you manage to get back onto that, having a home, the support and the counselling, you're going to need to overcome being a victim of homelessness. I mean, there's a housing first was introduced, which is by the government, which is about putting

2:06the person in the house first and then wrapping all the services around them. So instead of a person kind of sorting out their addiction first and then getting accommodation, it's done so they've got a forever home. Now, in the last quarter last year, there were only four tendencies on the housing first established in Claire. And only 60 over like four years. Now, that figure needs to increase. There are more houses being built. That's great, but there needs to be more housing first, more accommodation that rough sleepers, people in emergency housing can be moving too successfully.