Report paints a bleak picture but unfortunately the findings are no surprise to those working in homelessness services
The demand for our services has grown significantly over the past few years – in just one week last December, we received over 500 calls for help from people experiencing or at risk of homelessness; at the same time, we only had 9 available beds (out of 464 beds).
Mounting demand coupled with inadequate funding for homelessness services has placed increasing strain on frontline staff and services – many who often go above and beyond in their efforts to support people experiencing homelessness. We are also seeing more complex needs among those we support, particularly in terms of mental health. This is unsustainable – the sector is at breaking point.
With 1 in 32 people in NI now homeless, this report should be viewed as an opportunity to do things better to both save money in the long-run and most importantly, improve outcomes for people experiencing and at risk of homelessness.
We must not forget the true impact on people
Every day at Simon Community we see the impact of failing to invest in addressing homelessness – it is families torn apart, children growing up in uncertainty and young people living without hope for their futures.
For Charmaine, Simon Community has become more than just a place to stay, it became a place of healing. “The support here is beyond anything I expected. It’s not just about housing. It’s about helping you get your life back.”
Need to focus on prevention
This report clearly highlights the urgent need for us to move away from reactive, crisis response only to more proactive and strategic spending on homelessness prevention efforts and tenancy sustainment.
We recognise the spiralling demand the NIHE are dealing with, but we are extremely worried about the report findings that only around 6% of homelessness expenditure is being spent on prevention efforts, despite this being a strategic objective of the NIHE.
Homelessness prevention is central to the ethos of Simon Community’s work as we know the best thing we can do for people is prevent them from ever needing our support services in the first place.
If we are to deliver on the Programme for Government commitment of ‘preventing homelessness, making it brief, rare and non-recurrent', then we must take this opportunity to prioritise and resource prevention efforts.
Be more ambitious with social home development
Need to be a lot more ambitious with our targets and efforts to build more social homes – Housing Supply Strategy & PfG sets targets of around 2,220 new social homes per year – but these targets are meaningless if adequate funding isn’t delivered
We can solve this problem by working together
The report rightfully highlights that homelessness and its impacts extend right across society and government, with direct implications for health, justice, education etc.
We can solve this problem – but it can’t just be down to housing & homelessness sector and Department for Communities alone – everyone has a part to play and now is the time for the NI Executive to step up and fully commit to cross departmental working to address one of the most pressing social issues of our time.