Large numbers of people will be made homeless if there are any further cuts to the Rent Supplement Scheme in the forthcoming Budget, the Simon Community has told an Oireachtas committee.
The Government is also in danger of not meeting its promise to end the need to sleep rough by next year because of cuts to essential services of organisations working with the homeless, the group said.
Cuts to the rent supplement in Budget 2009 and the Supplementary Budget had already put low income families and individuals at increased risk of homelessness, Simon's national research and policy manager Niamh Randall told the Oireachtas social and family affairs committee.
"Rent Supplement has already been cut twice in the past year; this certainly has put more individuals and families at risk of homelessness. We fear that any further cuts to this important support system will cause an increase in the number of people becoming homeless."
Reductions in the supplement were argued on the basis of a decline in rental markets. However rents at the lower end of the market are not falling as fast as those at the higher end, Ms Randall said. "Many people who are already living in poverty are not benefiting from such rent reductions yet they are being penalised by reductions in State support."
Where the supplement did not meet the cost of the rent tenants were often required to pay a "top-up" to landlords, even though such additional payments were "illegal" under the terms of the scheme.
"This often results in people doing without basic necessities such as food to avoid the risk of eviction," Ms Randall said.
In some areas community welfare officers were stopping people's supplements if they discovered they were paying top-ups to landlords, she said.
The recession meant that more people were at risk of homelessness, more would become homeless, and more people would turn to organisations such as the Simon Community. Yet the Government was cutting funding for essential services for homeless people, even though it had a target of ending the need to sleep rough and long-term homelessness by 2010, Ms Randall said.
"The long-term accommodation and support needs of people who are homeless are not currently being met. The 2010 commitments cannot be met until accommodation and health and social care needs are addressed."
