Now showing 1 - 4 of 4
  • Publication
    Traveller Accommodation Expert Review: Prepared by an independent Expert Group on behalf of the Minister of the Department of Housing, Planning and Local Government
    (Department of Housing, Planning and Local Government, 2019-07) ; ;
    This report sets out an integrated set of recommendations intended to improve the effectiveness of the arrangements for providing accommodation for members of the Traveller community, which were established by the Housing (Traveller Accommodation) Act, 1998. These recommendations address four key themes: - delivery reflecting need, - planning, - capacity and resources and, - governance. The review concludes that the arrangements established by the 1998 Act have significant strengths and have enabled the delivery of significant amounts of accommodation for Travellers, but they have failed to meet the full scale of accommodation need among this community. This is evidenced by the extremely high rate of Traveller homelessness, the increase in numbers of Traveller households sharing accommodation and living in overcrowded conditions, and the uneven record of delivery of Traveller-specific accommodation among local authorities and also approved housing bodies. Therefore, it is time to overhaul the Housing (Traveller Accommodation) Act, 1998 and other relevant legislation and policies which impact on accommodation provision for Travellers.
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  • Publication
    Youth Homelessness in the Dublin Region: A profile of young, single emergency accommodation users in 2016, 2017 and 2018
    (Focus Ireland, 2020-06-30) ;
    On behalf of Focus Ireland I am pleased to welcome the publication of ‘Youth Homelessness in the Dublin Region’. This is the first instalment in our new ‘Insights into Youth Homelessness’ series, which will build on our successful ‘Insights into Family Homelessness’ series.We hope that this new research series will inform more effective responses to youth homelessness by policy makers and homeless service providers. In this respect this publication is particularly timely because the recently published Programme for Government 2020 commits the new government to ‘develop a National Youth Homelessness Strategy’. This report will provide valuable information to inform this strategy because it presents the first analysis of quantitative data on young people who use emergency accommodation for homeless people in Dublin. The report fills important gaps in our knowledge of why this group enters homelessness and when and how they leave homelessness and enables further exploration of some of the insights generated by the qualitative research into youth homelessness, most recently Paula Mayock and Sarah Parker’s book entitled ‘Living in Limbo: Homeless Young People’s Paths to Housing’ (2017)1.It is also important to acknowledge that this report would not have been possible without the support of Focus Ireland’s donors and valuable collaborations. In 2018, Focus Ireland’s Research Sub-Committee decided, in response to an invitation from Professor Michelle Norris of UCD, that it would part fund a PhD as part of the Irish Research Council (IRC) Enterprise Partnership Scholarship Scheme. This important scheme is an opportunity for voluntary sector organisations, with a commitment to research, to work with leading academics and support doctoral research. It has enabled Focus Ireland to support Cliodhna Bairead’s very useful PhD research on homelessness among single people in Dublin. The report is also the result of a collaboration with the Dublin Region Homeless Executive (DRHE) which provided access to the high-quality data examined in this report.1 ‘Living in Limbo’ was commissioned by Focus
      301
  • Publication
    The Future of Council Housing An analysis of the financial sustainability of local authority provided social housing
    (Community Foundation of Ireland, 2018-06-26) ;
    For most of the period since social housing was first built in Ireland in the late 19th Century, local authorities have been its main providers. Local authorities have provided 365,350 council houses and flats since then and these dwellings accounted for 22.2% of the total Irish housing stock in 2016. These dwellings have made a major contribution to providing affordable, good-quality and secure accommodation for low-income households, and also to improving the quality and increasing the size of the Irish housing stock. The last three decades have seen a significant reduction in the traditional role of council housing as the primary source of accommodation for low-income renters however. In 1994, council housing tenants accounted for 73.2% of the low-income renting households in receipt of government housing supports. By 2016, this had fallen to just 53%. In part, this development reflects the decline in council housing output following the sharp contraction in the funding available to this sector after the economic crisis commenced in the late 2000s. Total public funding for new council housing fell by 94% between 2008 and 2013. It also reflects longer term factors such the tradition of selling council housing to tenants which dates back to the 1930s. In addition since the 1980s governments have relied increasingly on other sources of housing for low-income households. These include: not-for-profit sector approved housing bodies (AHBs) and government subsidies for private rented housing such as Rent Supplement and Housing Assistance Payment (HAP).
      834
  • Publication
    A Qualitative Study of LGBTQI+ Youth Homelessness in Ireland
    (Focus Ireland, 2020-09-24) ;
    This report on the experiences of LGBTQI+ young people who find themselves without a home emerges from an exploration of the causes and solutions to youth homelessness which Focus Ireland has been engaged with for over 30 years. An important dimension of that work has been our engagement with researchers and activists across the world. Around 5 years ago, during a seminar at which we had invited Professor Steven Gaetz and Melanie Redman to talk to us about the Canadian ‘A Way Home’ youth homeless strategy, one of the slides included a statement that – ‘if you are not looking at LGBTQ homelessness you are not dealing with the causes of youth homelessness.’ An intern with the Advocacy team asked what was known about the issue in Ireland. This report can be traced back to the fact that the answer to that question was ‘nothing at all’.
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