WOULD ANY PARENT CHOOSE TO BECOME HOMELESS JUST TO GET A NEW HOUSE?
Only a ‘tiny, tiny’ minority do so, insists Fr Peter McVerry as Housing Agency boss suggests that some families are ‘gaming’ the system...
ONLY a minuscule number of families make themselves homeless in order to jump the social housing queue, the country’s most respected homelessness campaigner has said.
Fr Peter McVerry insisted that the group of parents doing this to get a council house was only ‘a tiny, tiny fraction’ of homeless people – and he attacked the outgoing head of the Housing Agency for suggesting such scams were more widespread. The campaigning priest was responding to comments by Conor Skehan, who
retired as head of the Housing Agency last week.
Mr Skehan had said that the State has ‘unwittingly created a problem’ by prioritising selfdeclared homelessness above all other types of housing need.
He was referring to the shortlived 2015 ministerial direction by then housing minister Alan Kelly that 50% of social housing in Dublin city and county must be allocated to homeless people.
A year after the ministerial direction came in, the number of homeless families had more than doubled. As a result of this priorisation, which ended in July 2016, Mr Skehan claimed this has ‘created a distortion in the waiting list system and may have encouraged
‘He is remarkably ill-informed’
people to game the system’.
Similar sentiments have in the past been privately expressed within government, although no politician is prepared to say so in public for fear of a backlash from campaign groups. Moreover, this newspaper has also encountered instances of parents claiming to be homeless when in fact they are refusing offers of accommodation, or refusing State rental schemes.
However, yesterday Fr McVerry and other campaigners insisted the number of parents doing this in order to gain priority on housing lists was tiny. ‘There is a small element of truth to it, which he [Mr Skehan] has grossly distorted,’ Fr McVerry told the Irish Daily Mail last night. ‘Any system – whether it is a housing system, a social welfare system, a tax system – any system, you will get some people abusing it. That is no different to the housing system.
‘However, it is a tiny, tiny fraction of homeless people and families who are abusing the system.’
He added: ‘For a vast majority of families becoming homeless, they are being evicted from the private rental sector. There is no scam there. They are being thrown out. It is not their choice. If you become homeless, you will be placed in a hotel room for maybe 18 months or longer and that is no Butlins.’
And of Mr Skehan’s comments in yesterday’s Irish Times article, Fr McVerry said: ‘An article like that creates the impression this is widespread.’
Head of advocacy at Focus Ireland, Mike Allen, said: ‘You might find one or two people who believe they are going to improve their circumstances by declaring themselves homeless,’ but added: ‘Anybody who has actually looked at the evidence of that happening finds that there is no evidence.’
And he launched a scathing attack on Mr Skehan personally, saying: ‘Mr Skehan regularly comes out with things that are entirely opinions and not based on evidence or on any reading of reports about homelessness.
‘He is remarkably ill-informed for someone who has been in that role for six years.’
He added that while the numbers of homeless families did increase after January 2015 when the directive was first introduced, the numbers were on the increase anyway. ‘The fact is people are losing their homes because landlords are evicting them,’ he said. ‘And they can’t find a home because they can’t afford the rent and that is the underlying factor.’
Mr Skehan’s comments are in line with some contained in an unpublished April 2016 Review of Ministerial Direction on Housing Allocations for Homeless and Other Vulnerable Households.
At the end of the report, the Housing Agency recommended that the ministerial direction should lapse upon its final operation date of April 30, 2016, citing ‘incentives’ for households to ‘willingly seek to be reclassified as homeless’ as a key concern.
A spokesman for Housing Minister Eoghan Murphy’s department said in reaction to the furore over Mr Skehan’s comments: ‘The Housing Agency chairperson did not say that homeless people are gaming the system. He gave an opinion as to what may be an unintended consequence of previous government policy. This is part of his role as chair of the Housing Agency.
‘The Minister’s absolute commitment is to finding secure and sustainable homes for homeless individuals and families.’
According to the Department’s statistics, between December 2014 and August 2017, there was a net increase in the number of people recorded as homeless of 5,412 people, an astonishing rise of 189%.
The number of people who were homeless by January 2015 – when the ministerial direction came in – rose significantly on July 2014’s figures. Over that seven-month period, there were 24% more people aged between 25-44 in emergency accommodation, 15.4% more under 18, 10.4% more aged 18-24 and 14.3% more aged 45-64. However, in the next seven-month period, the numbers of those under 18 identified as homeless shot up by a staggering 72% from January 2015 to August 2015. Increases in the other age groups were up but not so marked.
Yet in the seven-month period after the ministerial direction ended in July 2016, the rise in those aged under 18 living in emergency accommodation was not so pronounced. It rose by 2.4%, a dramatic difference to the 72% rise in the seven-month period after Mr Kelly’s directive came in. Comment – Page 12 neil.michael@dailymail.ie