Councillors’ calls for action on rough sleepers falling on deaf ears
AT county and district council meetings over the past few months, we’ve seen several motions tabled calling for an out-of-hours service to deal with homelessness and rough sleepers. So far they seem to have fallen on deaf ears as housing officials have stated that they conform to a Regional Homeless Services and Support Unit policy.
This subject was raised again by a number of councillors at last week’s housing meeting and the outgoing Head of Housing Niall McCabe reiterated that, despite the motions of the councillors, there were ‘no plans’ to introduce an out-of-hours service any time soon and that ‘we don’t have the resources for that’.
There was quite animated discussion on the events of previous weeks which saw confusion reign with temperatures plumetting and rough sleepers still seeking shelter. Eventually, St Joseph’s Community Centre was opened up with emergency beds placed inside.
Cllr Lisa McDonald suggested that the council department had ‘failed abysmally’ in dealing with the issue, while a number of the members criticised a lack of communication with members in relation to what was being done to cater for rough sleepers.
‘We can’t have the confusion we’ve had in recent weeks,’ Aontú councillor Jim Codd said. ‘As an elected representative I was taking calls and I didn’t know that the council had rented St Joseph’s. I didn’t find out from the council officials either. I feel we need permanent emergency beds. I spoke to a GP who worked in the area of crash beds and he feels that we need what we had in St Joseph’s in an ongoing way.’
Cllr Tom Forde also criticised an ‘inability to communicate’ from the council’s housing department and also referenced a previous motion he put forward that had been unanimously passed.
‘Two years ago, I asked that the council should use some of its stock as emergency accommodation,’ he said. ‘We shouldn’t be spending millions on providing emergency accommodation.’
This was a point also made by Cllr Codd, who noted: ‘We are giving €625,000 in grants to homeless bodies. Should we not be looking at something more permanent?’
Mr McCabe replied that there were ‘a number of issues’ with crash beds including finance and management and whatever Wexford County Council does would have to be under the South East Homeless Network.
‘St Joseph’s was done very quickly,’ he said, reflecting on the events of previous week. ‘It was a developing situation and I accept responsibility for not telling all of the members. It was a week in which a fire had gutted the accommodation from our other provider.’
Cllr McDonald brought forward a motion stating that the current protocol for dealing with rough sleepers is ‘not fit for purpose’ and that the housing department needed to ‘put in place a step by step protocol to house rough sleepers in incelement weather, not just severe weather warnings’.
Director of Services Carolyne Godkin said she had ‘no problem’ with the motion, but added that the council was finding it extremely difficult to source suitable emergency accommodation following a serious fire at The Foggy Dew B&B.
‘We need to flick the humanity switch,’ Cllr McDonald said. ‘The system that was in place certainly didn’t work.’
The latest figures show that there’s been 86 calls to the Homeless Services and Support Unit in Wexford between January 1 and February 16. Of these, the council say 36 were dealt with by prevention, 19 were offered placement or placefinder support, 26 were ‘not eligible’ and six were unable to complete a full assessment.