Emergency accommodation figures almost triple over 10 years

By Cillian Sherlock, Press Association

The number of people accessing emergency homeless accommodation has reached a new high, in the last snapshot from before the Government’s rental reforms were introduced.

The number of people using emergency accommodation rose to 17,308 at the end of February, an increase from 17,112 the previous month.

The total is made up of 11,851 adults and 5,457 children, both at record levels.

The number of people accessing emergency accommodation has been increasing steadily for years and the monthly figures published by the Department of Housing do not account for people sleeping rough or those staying in hospitals, asylum centres or domestic violence shelters.

The figures give a sense of pressures on homeless services just before the Government’s rental reforms came into effect at the start of March.

It means the number of people accessing emergency homeless accommodation has almost tripled in the last 10 years, with the overall figure being 5,811 at the end of February 2016.

The government has said the changes will provide greater security for renters and boost supply while the opposition has said it will dramatically increase rent costs by thousands a year and lead to increased homelessness through evictions.

The legislation overhauled Rent Pressure Zones (RPZs), caps for areas of high rental demand, and extended them nationwide, where rents must be linked to the rate of inflation or at 2 per cent.

Any tenancies beginning from March 1st will also be of a minimum duration of six years and at the end of that term, landlords can raise rents beyond the cap to match the market rate.

New-build apartments are exempt from the cap.

Large landlords, defined as having four or more tenancies, will be banned from carrying out no-fault evictions for tenancies beginning from March.

A small landlord can end tenancies through a “no-fault eviction” in limited circumstances, such as economic hardship or to move a family member in but, if they do that, they cannot reset the rent until the six-year window ends.