€146m to fight the blight of homelessness in the capital

DUBLIN City Council is set to increase its spend on its homeless services to €145.7million next year.

The projected spend is €23million higher than the €122.5million the council estimated would be required to fund the service in 2017.

At the start of the year, the number of families accessing emergency accommodation in Dublin stood at 1,007 and this has increased to 1,138 families in September.

The figures are contained in a draft Dublin City Council budget for 2018 circulated to councillors ahead of an annual budget meeting next month. Documents also show the authority is to spend €35.3million in 2017 on modular pre-fab homes.

One of the largest projects is St Helena’s Drive where the cost per house of the 40-home development will be €265,640 while the cost per home at a 53-unit development at Elmdale, Cherry Orchard will be €297,659. The St Helena’s Drive development is to cost €10.6million while the spend on the Elmdale development will total €15.7million.

To the end of 2020, the council is estimating that its Rapid Programme in building pre-fabricated homes will be €215million.

The council has put a bill of €150million on building 629 such homes between next year and 2019.

The local authority is projecting a spend of €50million next year and €100milion in 2019 on ‘volumetric’ homes. The ‘volumetric-build’ project involves stacking factorybuilt housing units to form apartment blocks. The council has put a cost of €250,000 per unit on such homes.

The report also provides a comprehensive update on efforts to get families from hotels and B&Bs into family ‘hubs’.

And it states that the Dublin Homeless regional executive has opened two family hubs at ‘Mater Dei’ and ‘Bram Stoker’ with a third due that was due to be opened last week at Aisling House, Clontarf, accommodating 11 families.