Trinity researchers working with Focus Ireland have found that the number of families living in emergency accommodation has increased by nearly 350 per cent over the last five years.
The number of families in emergency accommodation increased from just over 300 to 1,548 between June 2014 and December 2019, the research found.
The report, named Focus on Homelessness and penned by Focus Ireland officials alongside a researcher from College’s School of Social Work and Social Policy, used over 450 government reports to track a “substantial increase in the extent of homelessness” – finding a 128 per cent increase outside of Dublin in the number of families in emergency accommodation since 2014.
Since 2014, the Department of Housing, Planning and Local Government has published data held by local authorities across the country showing the number of people living in emergency accommodation each month.
Researchers tracked 17 indicators of homelessness and analysed the rise among different ages and family types.
They found that 57 per cent of families in emergency accommodation are one-parent families, while the majority of households overall were single adults or couples without children.
As of December 2019, there were 755 families who had been homeless for more than six months, while the number of families homeless for more than two years shot up to 184, from 22 in 2016.
Michael Allen, the co-author of the report and director of advocacy for Focus Ireland, said in a press statement that the report has developed “policy recommendations that – if acted upon by Government – would help to greatly reduce the number of people becoming homeless”.
The rise in homelessness has impacted women, largely as a result of the proportion of “families in emergency accommodation with one female”, while there’s been a 231 per cent increase in the number people aged between 45 and 64 reporting as homeless – the largest rise when it comes to analysing data by age.
