Real homeless hit by these opportunists

WHEN Conor Skehan, the outgoing boss of the Housing Agency, says that people are declaring themselves homeless in order to jump the housing list queue, it is understandable that many people would dismiss this notion and refuse to accept that this is the case. To suggest such a thing, they would argue, must surely be motivated by Mr Skehan’s own personal views on the current housing crisis.

Yesterday, Fr Peter McVerry joined the voices criticising Mr Skehan’s claims. He said the issue had been grossly misrepresented, and that the vast majority of homeless people have simply been thrown out.

Nevertheless, Fr McVerry did say that a ‘tiny, tiny minority’ of parents are indeed making themselves homeless in order to jump the social housing queue. And, indeed, a report in 2016 did warn of creating ‘incentives’ for people to risk becoming homeless to jump social housing queues.

The very notion that any parent would voluntarily put their children into a hub or a hotel in order to skip the housing queue is quite horrifying. We are all well aware of the constraints that such living accommodation imposes on family life.

So we must remain as committed as ever to tackling the problem of homelessness and to ensuring that the welfare of children is prioritised above all else. However, this must be done in a way that doesn’t simply reward those who, it would appear, are not prepared to help themselves.

Around the country, day in and day out, thousands of working people are making huge personal sacrifices so that they can take on a mortgage and provide a longterm roof over the heads of their families.

For them, this kind of queue-jumping abuse by an opportunistic few is an unacceptable slap in the face.