Homeless deaths on streets a ‘sad indictment’ of emergency hostels

Homeless people are refusing to access emergency hostel accommodation because they “feel unsafe” due to rampant drug abuse, Fr Peter McVerry has warned.

Following the death of a rough sleeper in Dublin City Centre last week – identified as a man in his 40s – the founder of homelessness charity The Peter McVerry Trust said people are opting to brave the cold rather than stay in a hostel.

As temperature plunged this week Fr McVerry told The Irish Catholic that “every death on the streets is a sad indictment, but it has been happening for years”.

“Much of the emergency hostel accommodation available is unfit for purpose,” he said. “Many people refuse to go in, they don’t feel safe. They may be sharing a room with very active drug users, they may have drugs pushed on them. Some of the emergency hostel accommodation is very, very good but much of it is hopelessly inadequate and many people will not go into hostels, they just don’t feel safe – that is the issue.”

This comes as a report from the Health Research Board, published on Tuesday, revealed that 121 people who were homeless died in 2020, equivalent to 10 deaths per month – an increase on the 2019 figure of 92. A total of 23 people who died in 2020 were known to have been sleeping rough.

Fr McVerry said: “We need smaller hostels instead of the big 60-80-100 bed hostels, and we need a range of different types of hostels. While there are some drug-free hostels there are very few of them.

“There’s a lot of feuding going on between homeless groups of people, so I think we need much smaller units,” he said, adding that in order to access emergency accommodation all that should be needed is a name and date of birth “your personal circumstances are irrelevant”.

“You may have addiction problems, you may be drug free, you may have mental health or even physical health problems and you’re asked to go onto a top bunk. We need a whole revamp of the whole emergency hostel accommodation if we want to get people off the streets,” Fr McVerry said.

The most recent data from the Department of Housing revealed that the number of homeless people in Ireland increased yet again to a record high of 13,514, which includes more than 4,000 children.