The ICSH supports the call from many of our members organisations providing housing and services to homeless households, to extend the current eviction ban. The ban is not a homelessness solution but is a crisis response, and the housing and homelessness crisis has not abated. Pat Dennigan, CEO of Focus Ireland, has said that we must tackle the conditions that have made the eviction ban necessary before lifting it. Wayne Stanley, Executive Director of Simon Communities has said that they have been working with families who have been prevented from suffering the trauma of crossing the threshold of a homeless service because a moratorium has been in place.
Our member AHBs are acutely aware of the profoundly traumatic experience that is homelessness, and the longer-term impact it has on child and adult physical and mental health. The ICSH and our member organisations are ready and willing to work with Government to look at all solutions that will stem the tide of homelessness. Every realistic solution must be looked, including a ramping-up the government’s social housing acquisition (tenant in situ) programme and incentivising small-scale landlords to remain in the market.
