‘Free hotel stays only worsen the homeless crisis,’ says councillor
Furious backlash by poverty campaigners to claim
A DUBLIN councillor has suggested that by providing free hotel and B&B rooms that people are being incentivised to report as homeless.
Rathgar Rathmines councillor Ruairí McGinley sparked fury when he said that the offer of free rooms resulted in increased demand.
‘If you provide free hotel rooms what do you expect to happen?’ he asked a meeting of Dublin City Councillors. ‘A huge level of demand.
‘I was told that some measures were going to be put into place with some level of charge and told tonight the charge is zero,’ he said.
‘No attempt whatsoever is being made to collect money.’
Homelessness charity Focus Ireland reacted angrily to Independent Mr McGinley’s comments.
Speaking on RTÉ’s Today With Seán O’Rourke alongside the councillor, the group’s director for advocacy, Mike Allen, accused Mr McGinley of going to extreme lengths to ‘have a go at families who are experiencing homelessness’. He claimed that there was a ‘tailoring of myths about people who are homeless’ which ignored the impact of the housing and rental crisis on the situation.
‘There is a perverse incentive for councillors to get inordinate media attention by saying things that are not true,’ he said.
Mr Allen said that those living in hotels and B&Bs were confined to small spaces with few facilities and were forced to spend much time outside of their temporary home. ‘The reason that people in hotels are not charged is because, generally speaking, there are no cooking facilities,’ he said.
Cllr McGinley said costs associated with emergency accommodation had been first raised with him by a homeless person irked that they paid rent while others did not.
According to Dublin Region Homeless Executive families living in hotels and B&Bs are not charged for housing while those in hubs pay between €35-€42 per week.
‘Everybody has an income, whether it is a social welfare income or other income,’ Cllr McGinley added.
‘People can be in hotels for six months to a year. Unfortunately, there is an economic incentive if people are paying nothing for hotel accommodation, that is what we can expect to happen.’
He said he believed that a level of rent should be introduced based on the amount of income each individual had, and suggested a charge of between €20 and €50 per week for such hotel stays.
After families present as homeless they are assessed and ‘emergency accommodation placement is allocated based on what is available at any given time’ a spokeswoman for the Dublin Region Homeless Executive said.
However, Mr McGinley maintained that a contribution of some sort should still be a feature of such types of temporary housing.
‘People won’t value the accommodation if they’re paying nothing,’ he said.
‘People won’t value accommodation’