Dublin South West Sinn F\u00e9in TD, Se\u00e1n Crowe, has welcomed a small decrease in the numbers found sleeping rough in Dublin city but said that the figure was still unacceptable. He made his comments after the release of the latest count of rough sleepers by Dublin City Council which found 105 people homeless.<\/p>\n
Deputy Se\u00e1n Crowe continued;<\/p>\n
“I broadly welcome any decrease in people sleeping on the streets but the problem of homeless people sourcing accommodation is still with us. The latest count found 105 sleeping rough and 46 people sleeping on mats in the new Night Cafe operated by the homeless shelter Merchants Quay.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe night caf\u00e9 idea is an improvement on sleeping in a doorway but unfortunately we still have 151 people in Dublin who are essentially rough sleepers. That\u2019s a decrease of 17 from last count.<\/p>\n
\u201cCombined with these figures we have also seen an increase of 300 adults in emergency accommodation in the city, making it nearly 2000 in all. Across the State there are also 1000 homeless children sleeping in hotels.<\/p>\n
“The Government has promised to deliver 7400 homes this year but 5000 of these are supposed to come from the private sector. Private construction has slowed and there is a massive shortage of rental properties already, which is leading to the rent crisis.<\/p>\n
“In my opinion instead of tax breaks, the emphasis of Government should be to divert funds into building social housing and use a further 1 billion Euro from the strategic investment fund to
\ndeliver an extra 6500 homes. This would create more housing, stimulating employment that in turn would raise more tax income.<\/p>\n\u201cThe sad reality is that those poor unfortunates stuck in emergency accommodation will remain homeless if there is no accommodation for them, or if rents stay at an increasingly high and unaffordable level.<\/p>\n
“The Government currently spends about \u20ac5 million a year in Dublin providing hotel rooms for homeless families. They also spend about half a billion Euro subsidising private landlords and this is set to increase due to government plans to give an increased private tax subsidy.<\/p>\n
\u201cI welcome any decrease, but until we put in place a plan that addresses the accommodation shortage and begin to build, convert, refurbish and buy housing for families and single homeless people, then we will not see any significant decrease in figures in the medium term.”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
ENDS<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Dublin South West Sinn F\u00e9in TD, Se\u00e1n Crowe, has welcomed a small decrease in the numbers found sleeping rough in Dublin city but said that the figure was still unacceptable. He made his comments after the release of the latest count of rough sleepers by Dublin City Council which found 105 people homeless. Deputy Se\u00e1n […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[178,42],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2164","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-homelessness","category-housing"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/seancrowe.ie\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2164","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/seancrowe.ie\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/seancrowe.ie\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/seancrowe.ie\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/seancrowe.ie\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2164"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/seancrowe.ie\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2164\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2165,"href":"https:\/\/seancrowe.ie\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2164\/revisions\/2165"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/seancrowe.ie\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2164"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/seancrowe.ie\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2164"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/seancrowe.ie\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2164"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}