An end to homelessness in Ireland is now possible but members of new communities who come here risk being left behind due to current Government policy, the chairwoman of the Simon Community, Anne Connolly, has warned.
At the launch of the organisation's three-year strategic plan in Dublin yesterday, Ms Connolly said recent increases in funding and improvements in the quality and range of homeless services meant that rough sleeping and long-term stays in emergency accommodation could become a thing of the past.
She said Simon had reached a point where it could move away from "managing" the problem of homelessness to finding a solution.
Ms Connolly told The Irish Times that Simon's eight communities around the State had seen an increase in the number of individuals from new communities seeking to access its services.
Typical countries of origin of those involved include Poland, Lithuania and Latvia, yet no data currently existed on the number of individuals from new communities who were homeless.
Official figures also do not include those who are denied access to welfare payments because they do not meet residency criteria set out by the Government.
Early intervention, she said, meant that what was frequently only a temporary situation for such individuals, perhaps due to financial problems or language difficulties, could be prevented from developing into long-term homelessness.
"The Government needs to be able to treat without discrimination those people who are homeless in Ireland, irrespective of their country of origin," she said.
The strategic plan outlines four key steps which the Simon Community will take over the next three years in its efforts to end homelessness. These are quantifying housing need and offering solutions centred on individual needs; preventing homelessness; influencing change, including a commitment to ending long-term emergency accommodation stays, and building the organisation's internal capacity.
The strategy also underlines that the cost of providing high-quality accommodation in the private rented sector, with a support worker, is approximately €12,000 a year, while it costs €40,000 to provide an individual with supported community housing. This compares with the average cost of hospital psychiatric care of €120,000 a year.
Freek Spinnewijn of the European Federation of Organisations Working with Homeless People said Ireland was one of a "small group" of European countries which had developed successful homelessness policies.
He called on Ireland to take the lead by encouraging others, particularly larger countries, to follow its course.