‘The damage is done’ – homeless agency chief says no new emergency accommodation for the Dublin 1 area
There has been a rise in the number of “working homeless” presenting to homeless services in Dublin, the head of the agency responsible for addressing the issue has said.
Mary Hayes, director of the Dublin Region Homeless Executive (DRHE), said the profile of people presenting as homeless has changed as housing costs climb and more people are priced out of the capital, despite working in the city.
“We have a lot of working homeless these days, which is a feature that wasn’t so much around in my day,” Ms Hayes told the Irish Independent.
“It has changed. It’s the unaffordability of private rental for people. That has really changed the scene a lot.”
For the first time, the DRHE is tracking the number of homeless people presenting while in employment.
“You’re more likely to see it in couple households,” Ms Hayes said. “It’s not unusual to find one parent working any more.
“And certainly, in the single [homeless people], we’re seeing people in relatively low-paid employment, but who just can’t meet the bar of private rental or can’t find it.”
Ms Hayes, who has led the agency since 2021, said the public often perceives homelessness as something that goes hand-in-hand with rough sleeping and drug use, but this does not represent the majority of cases.
“Homelessness has many different faces at this point,” she said. “It’s not that there are fewer [hard cases], it’s that you’re seeing much more of the people who just have an affordability issue.”
When asked about reports that Gardiner Street in the north inner city accommodates one in 10 of Ireland’s homeless people, Ms Hayes said it was an unfortunate side-effect of a sudden rise in homeless numbers over the last few years.
“To build accommodation takes a long time, a lot of planning. The operators who were best adapted to provide what we were looking for were people who adapted old B&B properties,” she said.
“If you think about the geographic spread of those, it was from the airport to the city. So the old hospitality properties kind of ran from the airport, all the way down through Dorset Street, all the way down Gardiner Street.
“We were so far gone in numbers before we realised the impact, and that’s on me, in a sense. It’s always been a very difficult balance and I think I was just always focused on: ‘I need to have beds and I didn’t have enough beds’.”
In 2024, Dublin City Council (DCC) introduced an “over-concentration” check for each new emergency accommodation assessment.
I think we need to be building homes for people and not emergency accommodation
“We haven’t signed new contracts in the Dublin 1 area since 2024, but the damage is done and I recognise that it’s very over-concentrated,” Ms Hayes said.
Is there a way of walking some of that back?
“We can, and we want to, but it’s dependent on us having sufficient supply outside,” Ms Hayes said. “If we get enough to start decanting from the north inner city, then we will.”
The DRHE is working with the three other Dublin councils, Fingal, South Dublin and Dún Laoghaire-Rathdown, to develop emergency accommodation outside the core city area, but this process takes time, she said.
In terms of the areas deemed too over-concentrated for further emergency accommodation, Ms Hayes said Dublin 1 is “definitely” at the top of the list.
Numbers in emergency accommodation in Dublin by year
Parts of Dublin 3 and Dublin 7, which are close to the city, have also reached capacity, as well as some areas in Dublin 8.
Ireland’s homeless statistics continue to climb on an annual basis.
The latest published figures, for June of this year, show that 12,318 people were living in emergency accommodation across Dublin, representing just over 70pc of the unhoused population in the State.
That was up from 11,421 the same time last year, 10,396 in June 2024 and 9,265 in 2023. Ms Hayes said the situation so far this year was “stable”.
“What I would say is, it’s not getting worse, but it’s stable. That’s as good as I can say today having looked at the data from January to June,” she said.
“It’s unlikely at this stage to be worse than last year, but that’s still very, very high.”
There were 12,198 people in emergency accommodation in Dublin in January. Of those, 4,908 were classed as “single” cases, while the remaining 7,410 were part of a family unit. Just over 4,000 of those were children.
Homelessness has led to an increase in the bill footed by taxpayers to fund additional, mostly private, emergency accommodation across the city.
This primarily consists of hostels, B&Bs and hotels, which are engaged by the DRHE to accommodate people in need of a place to stay.
In 2014, the emergency accommodation bill was €29m for the year. This year, the figure is expected to surpass €400m – 14 times higher.
“You see the increase, these are big numbers,” Ms Hayes said, adding that emergency accommodation is “probably the worst way” to spend limited housing funds.
“That is spent on non-housing options, and both ourselves and the Department of Housing … we really want to try to focus on options that will give us alternatives to emergency accommodation.”
“You could throw all your eggs in one basket and say let’s build tons of emergency accommodation ourselves. But if we’re going to start building, I think we need to be building homes for people and not emergency accommodation, and that has to stay the focus.”
When asked about DCC’s record of housing delivery, in which it has fallen far short of targets for years, she said this year should be different.
“I’m assured on a daily basis that we’re going to get there this year. I work here and can feel the commitment to delivering on those figures,” she said.
Ms Hayes said people are spending a long time in the emergency accommodation system, leading to a logjam and increased levels of institutionalisation.
Ms Hayes said 30pc of families within Dublin’s emergency accommodation system have been there for two years or longer, up from 26pc this time last year.
A cohort of homeless people are rough sleepers, of which there were 136 at the last count in spring.
“Fifteen to 20pc would be your chronic rough sleepers, and you would probably get about 10pc who are brand new, never been seen before and not really known,” Ms Hayes said.
The rest “drift in and out” of emergency accommodation, but the overall number of rough sleepers recorded every six months is stable, she said.
When asked if it was her long-term aim to eliminate homelessness, she said: “I don’t necessarily see a stage that we won’t have some need for short-term provision. But it’s definitely the aim always to eliminate long-term homelessness.”
These are people who have been in the homelessness system for longer than two years, she said. Because this cohort continues to grow, she cannot give a timeline for this goal yet.
“My main target is to see that 30pc of families over two years, that it doesn’t keep growing. That’s where I keep my focus at the moment.”