Stark homeless numbers seen on Leeside

The number of adults in emergency accommodation in Cork has more than doubled over the past seven years.

That’s according to a new Focus Ireland report which shows the number has risen from 200 in 2014 to 412 as of June 2021.

The report, Focus on Homelessness, is a collaboration between Focus Ireland and the School of Social Work and Social Policy, Trinity College Dublin. According to Focus Ireland Practise Development Manager Gerard Spillane, one of the reasons for the high number of adults who are homeless is that demand for affordable accommodation is completely outweighing supply.

He said: “The housing crisis in Cork has continued especially in the last four years as rents are now comparable with prices in larger cities. The lack of one bed bedroom apartments is also a serious contributor to the number of adults who are homeless in Cork, particularly single people. An offset of the crisis in the city is that many individuals and families are now being forced out of city to the many surrounding towns and villages.”

The report also states that Cork accounts for 70 per cent of adults in emergency accommodation in the south west of the country. As of June 2021, there were 492 adults in emergency accommodation in the region. This number has risen by 144 per cent since June 2014, when these figures were first published.

The total number of households homeless in the southwest rose steadily from 2014 to 2019 and has since remained around 480. In June 2014, there were ten families in emergency accommodation in the southwest. This reached a peak of 143 in July 2019 and has since declined by 68 per cent. Since the beginning of 2020, there has been a sharp drop in family homelessness nationally, with the number of families in the south west falling by 59 per cent in this period.

As of June 2021, there were 46 families in emergency accommodation in the region. Adult individuals without accompanying children, often referred to as single homelessness, make up the majority of those in emergency accommodation. Of the 484 households in emergency accommodation in the southwest of the country in June 2021, 90 per cent were adult individuals without accompanying children and ten per cent were households with children. Of the households with accompanying children, the majority are single-parent families.

Since 2014, the Department of Housing, Local Government and Heritage has published data on the number of adults and child dependents in emergency accommodation each month. The Focus on Homelessness report aims to make this body of data available in an accessible and reliable format.

In addition, over the same period, quarterly performance reports and financial reports have contained data on the duration and cost of homelessness in Ireland.