A quarter of the Dublin Simon Community's beds were occupied by working people on one night this month.
Staff at the charity are seeing an increase in numbers of working people with nowhere to live and requiring emergency beds. One night this month, 33 of Dublin Simon’s 129 emergency beds were occupied by employed people.
These included cleaners, event and retail security staff, taxi drivers, van drivers and lorry drivers, scaffolders, electricians and construction workers, healthcare assistants and carers, shop workers and retail staff, barbers and bar workers.
The charity said that a number of factors, including the scarcity of suitable accommodation, soaring rents, the wider cost-of-living and notices to quit coming to the end of their term are causing more working people to require emergency accommodation.
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The individuals impacted report "attending viewings where hundreds of people were vying for the same room or property for rent". Dublin Simon added that single people are "at a distinct disadvantage as they lack access to a combined income, making them even more susceptible to homelessness".
Senior Manager of Emergency Services at Dublin Simon Community, Niamh Brennan said that it is "deeply demoralising" for working people to have to rely on emergency beds in homeless services.
“Single men are overrepresented in homelessness demographics and are being overlooked and neglected in the national discourse," she added. "It is our view that every person experiencing homelessness matters and deserves an exit from homelessness.
“There is a serious lack of exits from homelessness to adequate accommodation, meaning that people are becoming stuck in services indefinitely.”
The charity's CEO Catherine Kenny added: "As Government plans to significantly ramp up housing supply and the Fiscal Advisory Council recently warned that Ireland needs an influx of construction workers to meet this demand, there are skilled construction workers and tradespeople relying on beds in emergency accommodation. We have essential workers providing healthcare to the most vulnerable being pushed into crisis.
“We need fully resourced tenancy sustainment services, homelessness prevention teams to be established in each local authority, and a review of Housing Assistance Payment (HAP) to reflect market rates, to occur in conjunction with the longer-term plan to increase housing supply.
“Moreover, we are calling on Government to deliver sustained funding for the homelessness sector that reflects the full cost of service provision, accounts for the extraordinary surge in need, and appropriately remunerates our trained professional staff who are working at and beyond capacity.”
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