Sir, – Despite Minister for Housing Darragh O’Brien adding his signature to the Lisbon Declaration in June, committing Ireland to work towards ending homelessness by 2030, and the publication of Housing For All reiterating this commitment, the number of homeless children has again risen sharply. In September, an additional 155 children were made homeless. This is almost certainly linked to the Minister’s decision to lift the eviction ban in April. The blanket moratorium introduced in March 2020 had an immediate effect on the levels of homelessness as the flow of households evicted from the private rented sector was stymied. In two short months, homelessness decreased by over 1,000 adults and children. The trend continued steadily downwards.
A policy which was working successfully had been ended, which is entirely at odds with recent governments’ overt commitments to “evidence-based policymaking”. What would they call the rejection of policies supported by hard data?
The Government has explained the fall in homelessness as a result of its wider policy measures which have been following the same pattern since 2016. They inadvertently end up disowning the single most effective housing measure of the last decade.
Either the eviction ban worked to reduce homelessness, and those who had the vision to implement it should be praised and they should be tasked to consider how to reintroduce it; or we can only surmise that the eviction ban was never intended as a measure to reduce homelessness. It was introduced only to limit population movement during Covid-19 restrictions.
Any effect on homelessness, whether positive or not, was an unintended consequence. In this scenario the electorate will draw its own conclusions: for all the talk of “evidence-based policy”, this Government is still wedded to the ideology of profit-maximisation within housing policy. – Yours, etc,
KEITH ADAMS,
Jesuit Centre for
Faith and Justice,
Dublin 1.