AS MANY AS 150 children in the Mid West are in the grip of homelessness and sleeping in emergency beds nightly.
Many more children locally are not officially counted on homeless lists as they are staying with relatives, often in overcrowded properties.
90 families, including 148 children, plus another 200 single adults were sleeping in emergency accommodation up to four weeks ago in the region, according to latest figures published by the government, which is due to publish the number of people in emergency accommodation up to October in the coming days.
Meanwhile, local housing and addiction support service Novas warned in its annual report, published this Thursday (October 10), that more and more people are sleeping rough in Limerick as current emergency bed stock is not meeting demand.
The growing demand for services has resulted in “more people than ever living in precarious and unsustainable living arrangements”, Novas warned.
The charity said that at least 50 people per night were accessing its street outreach service, “reinforcing the trends of increased deprivation, unstable living arrangements, and homelessness”.
Novas also recorded a significant rise in presentations to its out-of-hours service in Limerick, which more than doubled from 1,130 to 2,855 presentations between 2022 and 2023.
Una Burns, Novas head of advocacy and communications, explained that “due to growing levels of rough sleeping in the city”, the charity was currently providing nightly hot beverages, food, and sleeping bags when no alternative accommodation is available.
Ms Burns said this was “not a sufficient or sustainable solution for people who are forced to rough sleep”.
“A more comprehensive, housing-led solution is required,” she said, adding that “we need additional one-bed units of housing and more STA (supported temporary accommodation) beds in the system”.
She said that rough sleepers have surged in Limerick from less than 10 two years ago to 60 today.
“In excess of 60 people are sleeping rough in Limerick because they have no where else to go. There were less than 10 persons sleeping rough two years ago,” she said.
Novas, which provides services across the Mid West and Dublin, said supports were also urgently required to meet “the specific needs of women who experience homelessness and the importance of female-only services and spaces”.
“This can create a sense of safety among female residents where they can lean into the peer support of a collective experience of homelessness and multiple disadvantage, including dual diagnosis of mental health and addiction,” Ms Burns said.
Novas chief executive Una Deasy said hurdles remain in providing exit pathways from homelessness, and called for a “redoubling of efforts to end homelessness by 2030, as per the Lisbon Declaration” by increasing national housing output.
Last year, through its own tenant-in-situ affordable housing scheme, Novas created 80 new tenancies for 129 new tenants, bringing its total number of tenants to almost 800.
Despite the profound trauma homelessness creates for people, and no apparent end to the crisis, Ms Deasy remained hopeful for positive change, saying that “our message today is clear, homelessness is solvable.”
“We can work together to end the crisis by delivering more homes with urgency and unwavering focus and additional resources for prevention measures such as the tenant-in-situ scheme.”
