More people could be abandoned to sleep rough on Dublin’s streets, if proposed changes to the law on who can access homeless services go ahead.
Changes put forward by the Department of Housing would “100 percent, unequivocally, lead to an increase in people sleeping outside”, says Louisa Santoro, CEO of the Mendicity Institution, a day centre for homeless people.
This would impact vulnerable people, especially children, and social cohesion, say Green Party Councillor Janet Horner and Green Party TD Neasa Hourigan, in a letter this week to the Minister for Housing, Fianna Fáil TD Darragh O’Brien.
Horner said by phone on Monday that she thinks that if the changes go ahead, there would be more people sleeping rough in Dublin city centre.
“Widespread rough sleeping leads to a whole range of other problems: from significant danger to the individuals affected, to increase in anti-social behaviour and criminal behaviour, and increased hostility towards migrants,” Horner says.
A Department of Housing consultation document outlining proposed changes to the Housing Act 1988 includes tightening the eligibility criteria so that councils can refuse access to homeless accommodation to people who don’t meet a “habitual residence condition”
The habitual residence condition tests the strength of the person’s ties to Ireland, where they have been living previously and whether they intend to stay in Ireland for the foreseeable future. It isn’t defined in law.
The proposed changes “will mean that some cohorts will no longer have an entitlement to homeless emergency accommodation support from housing authorities”, the consultation document says.
“The likely cohorts will be people who are either unlawfully in the country or may have just arrived from another EU country and/or do not meet the definition of a worker in EU law after three months residency,” it says.
Martin Collins, co-director of Pavee Point, which represents Travellers and the Roma community in Ireland, says he is very worried about the impact of proposed changes on Roma families. “You’re going to find families homeless, living on the streets, effectively.”
Used for access to social welfare supports, the habitual residence condition mainly affects recent immigrants – but Irish citizens have also been refused, says Collins, including Travellers returning from the United Kingdom.
The Department of Housing didn’t respond to queries about the proposed changes.
Pushing for changes
According to the report, the County and City Management Association, made up of council chiefs, raised concerns, which prompted the review.
There are now more than 12,500 people in emergency accommodation, says the consultation document, explaining the reason for the relook at the rules.
Who uses homeless hostels has changed too, it says, with more immigrants – many without any pathway out into permanent housing because they cannot access social housing – and more families. As such, the government needs “re-tooling” to respond to these changes, it says.
“The Department intends to bring forward amendments to the homeless-related provisions of the Housing Act 1988,” says the consultation document.
Those changes would include introducing “eligibility criteria, in line with amendments to the social housing legislation, requiring lawful and habitual residency as conditions for access to section 10-funded emergency accommodation”, it says.
Section 10-funded emergency accommodation is all homeless accommodation funded by the councils.
At the moment EU nationals can usually access emergency accommodation here, but this proposed change would increase barriers for those people by testing them for habitual residence in Ireland.
Returning Irish emigrants, those who have lived long-term in other countries could also fail to meet the habitual residence condition, which is a fairly complex test taking into account several different factors.
The habitual residence condition examines where the person’s “centre of interest” is, according to the information on the Department of Social Protection website.
It looks at how long the applicant has lived in Ireland as well as how long they plan to live here and how long they lived in another country. It also examines the pattern of their employment and the reason for their absence from Ireland.
The proposed new legislation would also define which households are at risk of homelessness and what support local authorities may offer them.
It would “strengthen the statutory framework within which housing authorities may support households experiencing, or at risk of, homelessness”, says the consultation document, which is dated 16 October 2023.
The new legislation should make it clear how the councils should handle cases where the applicant for homeless accommodation has a housing entitlement in another county, says the consultation document.
In 2020, the Dublin Region Homeless Executive left people sleeping outside while there were beds available because it assessed that they should return to other counties, a rule known as the local connection.
The new laws should also clarify when a council should withdraw homeless accommodation from a person who poses a danger to other service users.
The Department of Housing didn’t respond in time for publication to queries sent Monday about all of these issues, including whether there are specialist hostels in place for high-risk offenders.
The consultation document also suggests that the department will consider what system or policy is needed to ensure nobody is unable to access shelter, given the changes will strip some of that entitlement.
There needn’t be a law to ensure this, the document says, just a policy “allowing for flexibility of approach”.
Out in the cold
Santoro, the CEO of the Mendicity Institution, a homeless day centre, says her charity was not consulted about the proposed changes.
“If there are going to be changes in the provision of emergency accommodation, so it’s not going to be provided for people who are at risk of rough sleeping, we really want to be involved in that,” says Santoro.
Her staff are going to have to deal with the fallout from these changes, Santoro says. Homeless people don’t just disappear when they are refused a bed in a hostel, she says.
“If I make a phone call and somebody is refused accommodation, they don’t suddenly become not homeless, they are still sitting in Mendicity,” she says.
Those people continue to use her day service and while they are on the streets their physical health and mental health worsen, she says. Some of them die while sleeping outside.
“If there is a spike in deaths, then they won’t count them as homeless deaths because they will say that they were not known to services,” she says.
There are already a lot of bureaucratic hurdles to people trying to access homeless accommodation, says Santoro.
A thorough count of all people sleeping outside is needed in order to track the impact of these changes, she says. The Dublin Region Homeless Executive rough sleeper count doesn’t actually count all those people who are sleeping rough, Santoro has highlighted.
Roma families
Collins, co-director of Pavee Point, said by phone on Tuesday that he is seriously concerned about the impact of the proposed amendments, particularly on Roma families.
“It’s very well documented that Travellers and Roma people are disproportionately represented in the homeless figures,” he said. “Any further changes that would make access to homeless accommodation stricter will have serious implications for Roma people in particular.”
Roma people who live in Ireland often struggle to meet the habitual residence condition for social welfare because they may not have documentation to prove their tenancies or employment histories and they face language barriers as well as other issues, he said.
“If this regulatory barrier was further applied to all emergency homeless accommodation, we would see the Roma community further marginalised, facing a desperate humanitarian crisis,” says the Pavee Point contribution to the consultation process on the proposed amendments to the law.
The Department of Housing should focus on tackling the underlying causes of the homeless crisis, including the shortage of social and affordable homes, Pavee Point’s contribution says.
The proposed changes could also affect Travellers who may move back from the UK as well as any other Irish people coming home from abroad, said Collins, but he expects it will particularly affect Roma families.
“You are talking about families, large families, extended families, children,” he says. “You are also talking about a community that is very vulnerable, has huge levels of discrimination, low educational attainment and a high unemployment rate.”