Homelessness on the rise: Increase in people seen by Cork Simon ‘relentless’

The issue of homelessness has never been as severe in Cork as it is right now, the head of the city’s leading housing and homeless charity has said.

Cork Simon chief executive Dermot Kavanagh told The Echo that the past year has been the most challenging the charity has ever experienced.

At the launch of Cork Simon’s annual impact report for 2023, Mr Kavanagh said the past year had been “very tough”, with the charity supporting more people than ever before.

“The number of people turning to us for help increased by 9% in just 12 months to 1,498 people,” he said. “We met more people sleeping rough, we supported more people in our emergency accommodation, and we responded to a growing complexity of need.”

Cork Simon increased capacity at its emergency accommodation by 17% to 75 people a night in 2023, compared to 64 per night in 2022. The charity’s outreach team met 577 men and women sleeping rough in 2023 — a 39% increase compared to 2022, meeting an average of 30 people per night — a 135% increase.

Cork Simon’s soup run served 13,743 hot meals in 2023 — a 102% increase on 2022.

The number of people classed as long-term homeless — with stays of more than six months in emergency accommodation over a 12-month period — at Cork Simon’s emergency shelter increased by 34% to 67 people in 2023.

Mr Kavanagh said it had been seven years since then taoiseach Leo Varadkar had declared a housing and homelessness emergency.

“Back then, in 2017, in July, there were 8,000 people homeless and [now] there are 14,500 people homeless across the country, and similarly the number of homeless people in the South-West, mainly in Cork, has also doubled in that period,” he said.

“It’s very concerning, and it’s concerning in light of the fact that a couple of years ago the Government committed to ending homelessness, as part of the Lisbon Declaration, by 2030, so it’s vital that goal is re-energised now.”

Mr Kavanagh said the charity had responded to myriad challenges against the backdrop of addressing a 2022 deficit of “well over half a million euro”, and reducing it to €180,000 while working on breaking even by the end of 2024.

Some 12,497 donors gave the charity €5,203,468 last year, he said, with 88c from every euro spent directly on activities and services aimed at ending homelessness; while 400 part-time volunteers and 31 full-time volunteers from five different countries gave generously of their time and skills during 2023.

Cork Simon supported 46 people to move from homelessness to secure, affordable, supported, and independent housing in 2023, while 101 people were supported by the charity’s addiction treatment and aftercare programme, representing a 23% increase.

Some 221 people engaged with Cork Simon’s employment and training programme over the past year.

Mr Kavanagh said the charity had never before seen such a demand for its services, with pressure increasing every year. “We were up to 1,500 people last year, and I don’t know how many years now I’ve been coming out when we’ve launched our annual report and said: ‘We’ve seen more people this year than last year’, and it’s just relentless,” said Mr Kavanagh.

He said there had been a great improvement over recent years in the provision of social housing by Cork City Council, but that population pressures meant “you’re running to stand still” and targets needed to be revisited.

Mr Kavanagh added that Cork Simon is a broad community working collaboratively to help people find a home.

“We had incredible support throughout a difficult year for everyone,” he said. “It really is Cork at its best.”