A leading homeless charity has warned that the rapid rise in people accessing its services has placed a huge strain on its resources.
The Peter McVerry Trust said the number of people accessing its services had increased for the seventh year in a row and expressed concern that a spike in rents could push more people out of their accommodation and into homeless services.
Speaking ahead of the launch of the charity's annual report on Tuesday, CEO Pat Doyle said the Trust had helped 4,460 people in 2014, an increase of 24 per cent on the previous year.
He said 2015 had been even busier, with the charity expecting to work with 7,500 people across its services, an increase of 68 per cent in a single year.
“Responding to these needs has placed a huge strain on our resources as well as our ability to respond and offer additional supports to those in need,” he said.
“This winter, for the first time in the organisation’s history, we may not have the financial resources needed to respond quickly to the emergency needs of people in homelessness. This simply underlines the scale of the challenge we are attempting to tackle.”
Mr Doyle called on the Government to continue to prioritise homelessness and the factors contributing to it.
“We have welcomed recent measures on rental reform and housing supply but warned that rents will rise sharply unless new legislation is introduced immediately,” he said.
“Today’s Daft rental report which shows the single largest quarterly increase in rents since early 2007 only adds to our concerns that we will see a sharp rent rise result in a spike in homelessness at time when the sector could easily be overwhelmed.”
He said the numbers in need of the charity’s help were “staggering” and those at risk even greater.
“We can’t afford for thoughts of a general election to deflect from the huge challenges that exist, challenges that can only be successfully tackled with strong Government leadership.”
Mr Doyle said housing supply remained the charity’s number one priority and that despite the rise in the numbers accessing homeless services the charity had remained committed to making significant investments in new housing supply.
Peter McVerry Trust has invested heavily in securing housing units to help people move out of homelessness. Last year we managed to move 132 people into their own homes and recorded a 168% increase in the number of people worked with in their own homes.”
“The charity ended 2014 with 136 housing units scattered across Dublin, compared with less than 10 units in 2008. The challenge that we face is ensuring that housing supply when it does come on stream meets the needs of people in homeless services and is built to meet the needs of all cohorts including single people who make up the majority of those in homelessness.”
The charity says the cost of running its services in 2014 was €10.6 million. It raised €3.8 million in public donations in 2014 and received €6.8 million from the State.
It estimates that the budget for 2015 will exceed €13 million and has launched a Christmas Fundraising Appeal to raise €1 million to cope with the extra demand places on its services.