Sr. Stanislaus Kennedy, Life President & Founder of Focus Ireland explains that while the homelessness crisis is the worst we have ever seen, the situation would be much worse without the work of Focus Ireland. She also explains how the crisis can be ended by returning to more provision of social housing…
When I founded Focus Ireland back in 1985 I thought we could solve homelessness within 10 years by housing all the people who were homeless and preventing people from falling into long-term homelessness. And I was not far wrong: if government had continued to provide social housing as they had done in the past, then it would have been quite feasible.
But as we all now know, to our horror and shame, that is not what happened. Instead, successive governments made a conscious decision to move away from providing housing for people who could not afford to house themselves, and we saw a sharp decline in social housing.
We went from a situation where up to a third of houses in the country were provided by local authorities in the 1970s to a figure of 6.6% in the early years of this century – in spite of constantly increasing demand. The private sector was supposed to step into the breach – with the results we now see daily on our streets and nightly on our television screens. The government must return to delivering more social housing if we are to end this current crisis.
We, in Focus Ireland, are working to end this crisis and put our energy into helping those impacted, and finding practical solutions. We need to end homelessness because it is morally and fundamentally wrong.
It breaks my heart to know that across Dublin last year more children were born into homelessness than ever before. Some of them recently spend their first Christmas stuck with their family, forced to live in one little room together.
Beliefs
This is truly awful and it made me think back to what Christmas is all about and to the first Christmas in Bethlehem when nobody would take in Mary and Joseph and Mary had to give birth to Jesus in a stable and lay him in a manger.
I am sure this will strike a chord with everyone no matter what their beliefs are, similarly these children today have also been turned away and left as homeless. They are our children too and we have a duty as a society to provide a safe home for them. This is what we are working to do.
In 2017 Focus Ireland managed to help over 700 families to secure a home and escape homelessness.
However, the crisis still continued to deepen as shockingly at least two or three more families – and other individuals – became homeless every single day in 2017.
How can we stand by while families and their children who are homeless are forced to live in one hotel room for months at a time?
There is nowhere safe for the children to play, do their homework or for the family to even cook a meal.
This is causing terrible damage for these families and also the many single people who are homeless, stuck in hostels or some even sleeping on the streets.
Focus Ireland continues to put forward realistic policy solutions to help prevent and end homelessness.
While the crisis is still deepening the situation would be much worse without the lifeline services and housing we provide.
We are there when people need us. We helped a record number of over 14,000 people last year who were homeless or at risk. We also provide over 900 homes nationwide.
We work hard to support families and individuals every day but we depend on donations now more than ever to raise funds so our services can cope with the constantly rising demand. Focus Ireland always stresses that every euro donated counts in the battle against homelessness as 89 cents of every euro received goes directly to our services to support people who are homeless and those at risk.
Any donation will support our work challenging homelessness and changing lives and help us to move towards ending this terrible human crisis.
Sr Stan’s article is part of a series on homelessness appearing in The Irish Catholic during the month of January. Her piece was sponsored by Focus Ireland.
To see more of Focus’ advocacy work and how a donation can help them house families, please visit their website www.focusireland.ie.