Chai Brady
A person that can retreat to a place they call home, where they feel safe and secure, will undoubtedly be in a better position to seek support to help themselves out of a spiral of mental health, addiction or other related issues.
Ireland now has more than 13,500 people who are homeless, which includes almost 2,000 families who are in emergency accommodation, according to the Department of Housing’s most recently released tally last week.
Within this colossal figure are the long-term rough sleepers, or the ‘chronically homeless’ (many of which do not appear in the Government’s statistics). They are suffering from a myriad of problems that prevent them from potentially ever receiving the supports necessary. These are the people the ‘Housing First’ initiative aims to assist.
The Housing First programme prioritises providing immediate housing to individuals experiencing homelessness, regardless of their background or circumstances, with a focus on those facing severe challenges. By offering stable housing as a foundation, Housing First aims to support individuals in addressing their underlying needs and facilitating their path towards recovery and integration into the community.
In March 2022 the Housing First office was launched by the Government’s Housing Agency. Rob Lowth, former Head of Homeless Services for Limerick City and County Council, was announced as the National Director of the programme. There were almost 1,000 Housing First tenancies at the end of December – a large number when accounting for the fact those who are involved in the programme are the most vulnerable in society, who may have behavioural, addiction, mental health issues and more, and have been overlooked for many years.
Speaking to The Irish Catholic, Mr Lowth said: “We’re involved in everything across from the health side to the housing side to the community side, which is a really big part of Housing First.
“It is reconnecting people with their communities, because a lot of the time people actually forget that our tenants in Housing First came from these communities, and at the end of the day they belong to those communities and we’re trying to repair the damage. There is a huge stigma with homelessness, addiction and mental health and it is tough for individuals to get back to where they came from as well,” he said.
Working for the local authority in Limerick, Mr Lowth saw first-hand the positive impacts Housing First can have regarding the case of a woman who struggled with homelessness and addiction for 16 years. He said she had been in the revolving door of hostels and the health system as “her health was deteriorating from rough sleeping to time in hostels, to just a prolonged addiction”, but had successfully rebuilt her life.
Commitment
At the core of Housing First is a commitment to individualised support and care, with Mr Lowth saying: “I feel fortunate that I can tell that story, but Housing First actually has become about the 991 stories and the case studies of each of them, because they are all so different, they are all so unique. You are taking people at face value and meeting them with their choices.
“So, if they choose to drink one bottle of something less this week or take one part of a drug less this week of this day, that is a success. It’s measuring the small successes in life and working on them, to get to the next step.”
Under the initiative one-bed housing is the ideal for individuals with complex needs but this is almost impossible to find in the current housing climate. Mr Lowth said: “We try to focus on one-bed accommodation in scattered sites and that is not available in Ireland. We seem to have lost the value of a one-bed property. If you were an individual professional and you wanted to say: ‘OK, I’ll go rent myself a one-bed, I’d like to live alone,’ trying to find one is difficult.
“Of the total housing market in Ireland, the breakdown of one-beds is only 6% of the housing stock for the last census. That is tiny. It’s been difficult to try and change the narrative with planners who need to allow planning permission, and encourage one-beds… but it is almost the same price to develop a two-bed as it is a one-bed. While that may seem like a logical thing to do, on something like Housing First or housing specifically for elderly, or housing specifically for people with disabilities, it’s something that we need to address a little bit better in the country,” he insisted.
He added that when looking at local authority housing waiting lists, the demand for one-bed accommodation is still the highest demand. The aim is to reach the Government’s target of 2,000 tenancies under the programme by 2026, but they are “driving to surpass that”.
However, Mr Lowth said there is a need to provide more supports to those who enter into the Housing First programme as they may not have engaged with health services, in particular, for a very long time. This part of the reintegration into their community.
It’s all about realising the recovery potential in somebody, because everybody has that recovery potential and that is the premise that we operate on”
He said: “So when somebody comes into Housing First, they may not be in the frame of mind to make appointments and that’s where we can have clinical supports visit them, but the ultimate goal, as part of their recovery, would be to integrate them back into mainstream services and get them to that point where they realise ‘OK I have an appointment, I need to make that appointment, that’s part of my normal life now’, and that is happening.
“Some people will never get to that point and we acknowledge and we realise that, and that’s where we have the clinical teams to deliver that type of service. It’s all about realising the recovery potential in somebody, because everybody has that recovery potential and that is the premise that we operate on – that we hopefully get them to that point in the future where they are taking more responsibility. It is a harm reduction approach like in terms of an addiction, but it’s where small incremental changes will make a difference to somebody’s life.”
Mr Lowth cited a study of four Housing First tenants in Cork which compared the number of times they presented to A&E three years before they entered the Housing First programme (74 times) and the three years after (4 times). Regarding this he said: “We’re trying to get it out there into the health service as well to let them see that there is a lot of positives from Housing First and if you support us working with our tenants as well you will see that knock-on benefit.”
Fidelity
There is a term known as the ‘fidelity’ of Housing First, which basically means the funding is aimed at the most vulnerable.
Mr Lowth explains: “When I was in a local authority, I was inducted into the idea that somebody has to be sober before they get a house, they have to have a history of housing before they are given a house. And that was the holy grail of local authority housing at the time. The people we’re dealing with now on Housing First never stood a chance. That is where we are trying to protect that fidelity of Housing First, because there is such a demand on housing in a housing crisis.”
Speaking of the role of the Church in the provision of homelessness services and even being at the vanguard of Housing First, Mr Lowth said: “There’s so many great services that have their origins in the Church. I went to school in Gormanston College and I was very fortunate that my parents… sent me to the Franciscans, so that gave me a sense of empathy from a young age… it’s what your parents give you, and their beliefs, and what you learn at school I think can set you up for making good in the world and trying to do something a little bit differently.
The amount of people he has helped over the years… I think that is the difference in terms of impacting on people’s lives to see the positive outcomes”
“It’s the same in terms of the organisations that were set up by the Church, I think the State is more involved now, and starting to get better at understanding of the needs of individuals who need social services and we definitely have become a lot more professional in that sense. But I think these organisations were set up by a lot of, not just Catholic organisastions, Christian organisations, for the right reasons and I think that does need be acknowledged, there’s no two ways about it. From that perspective it’s a legacy and I know it’s often talked about as a legacy in a negative sense but I think even what Peter McVerry himself has done has been phenomenal. The amount of people he has helped over the years… I think that is the difference in terms of impacting on people’s lives to see the positive outcomes.
“I think Peter saw himself in Housing First from an early time, the benefit of it, and the understanding that it was the right direction to go in. Because he was seeing a lot of these younger people from a very early age and he has seen, and I guess I would have seen it working in a local authority, the multi-generational side of homelessness, and that is a horrible thing to see…”