I will. Thank you.
The Simon Communities of Ireland welcome the opportunity to meet the committee today and we thank the members for taking time out of their busy schedules. I am aware of the time constraints so I will be quick in getting to the main points.
The Simon Communities of Ireland provide the best possible care, accommodation and support for people experiencing homelessness and those at risk. Together with people who are homeless, we tackle the root causes of homelessness, promote innovative responses and urge the Government to fulfil its commitments. Simon delivers support and services to almost 5,000 people who experience or are at risk of homelessness every year.
The Simon Communities is an affiliation of local communities in Cork, Dublin, Dundalk, Galway, the midlands, the mid-west, the north west and the south east. In addition, the national office performs a co-ordinating role in terms of campaigning in the areas of housing and homeless policy, the wider poverty and social inclusion agenda, best practice in service delivery and working with people who are homeless, and in the area of full-time volunteering promoting excellence and providing accredited training. Members will see an attached list showing the ways we work in this area.
We appreciate the remit of this committee and will focus on those issues which the committee can influence. However, initially we would like to give a quick update on the current context in which we are working. We are acutely aware of the pressures associated with the fiscal crisis and the fact that difficult decisions must be made. However, we wish to highlight a number of issues based on our knowledge and experience for almost four decades in working with people who are homeless and at risk of homelessness throughout Ireland.
The Government has pledged to end the need to sleep rough and long-term homelessness by 2010. The Way Home — A Strategy to Address Adult Homelessness in Ireland, along with the homelessness strategy national implementation plan offers a blueprint to facilitate the realisation of these key commitments. The Government is cutting funding from essential services working towards these goals. Simon communities throughout the country are under increasing pressure in terms of funding with reductions in statutory funding across a range of budget lines and uncertainty in terms of voluntary donations. In addition, the communities are responding to increased demands and are bracing themselves for an increase in those turning to their services for support in the coming months. The recession means more people are at risk of homelessness, more people will become homeless and more people will turn to the Simon communities for support.
Housing is important, but homelessness is about more than housing. It is also about physical and mental health, drug and alcohol use and is often about complex needs. The long-term accommodation and support needs of people who are homeless are not being met currently. The 2010 commitments cannot be met until accommodation and health and social care needs are addressed. More information on the current context will be found in the appendix on page 7.
The Department of Social and Family Affairs plays an essential role both in preventing people from becoming homeless and in facilitating people to move out of homelessness though welfare and family support services. It is critical that vulnerable groups are not impacted further with changes in the budget for 2010. Of particular concern are recent changes to the rent supplement scheme and the habitual residence condition. As most members are probably aware, the rent supplement scheme is a supplementary allowance available to those who cannot cover the cost of rental accommodation from their own finances. In general, households qualify for rent supplement if their only income is a social welfare or Health Service Executive, HSE, payment and they satisfy a number of other rules. Rent supplement payments are intended to prevent household incomes from falling below the relative income poverty line after payment of rent. Rent supplement offers a safety net for people at a time of real crisis preventing them from becoming homeless or returning to homelessness.
However, there are a number of difficulties associated with this scheme. It can be difficult to access and landlords are not always willing to accept rent supplement payments. Sometimes the rent supplement amount is not enough to meet the full cost of renting and many landlords require tenants to pay an additional top-up to their personal contribution, often from their own limited resources. This often results in people doing without basic necessities such as food to avoid the risk of eviction. There are currently 90,825 households in receipt of rent supplement in the State, an increase of 52% since the end of 2007.
Changes in the operation of this scheme as part of the 2009 budget and the 2009 supplementary budget have put increased financial pressure on people and families on low incomes, increasing their risk of becoming homeless. The changes in the 2009 budget meant that the minimum contribution of households in receipt of rent supplement was increased from €13 per week to €18 per week. In addition, the changes in the 2009 supplementary budget meant that entitlement to rent supplement was restricted to households who were living in rented accommodation or in accommodation for homeless people for at least six months in the previous 12 months or who were on a local authority housing list following a full housing assessment. The minimum household contribution was further increased from €18 to €24. The maximum rent limits were reduced by between 6% and 10% depending on geographical area and household size. Rent supplement payments currently being made to tenants were reduced by 8% to encourage landlords of existing rent supplement tenants to reduce their rents.
The reductions in rent supplement were argued on the basis of a decline in rental markets. However, while rent reductions are undoubtedly being experienced at the higher end of the market, these are not necessarily being felt at the lower end where the majority of people who are poor and vulnerable reside. Evidence produced by Threshold suggests that in high demand areas, especially at the lower end of the rental market, rents are not falling as fast as elsewhere, if at all. Thus, many people who are already living in poverty are not benefiting from such rent reductions and yet are being penalised by reductions in State support.
These changes will put more individuals and families at increased risk of homelessness. The combined increase in the tenants' contribution from €13 per week to €24 per week represents an increase of 85%. We also fear that these changes will pressurise already vulnerable tenants to increase their personal contribution with further topping up, thus diminishing their limited resources and increasing their vulnerability and risk of homelessness. In addition, while a central tenet of the national homeless strategy is prevention, recent changes may mean some households become homeless as they do not meet the tighter eligibility criteria. For example, they might not be living in private rented accommodation or in accommodation for people who are homeless for six of the previous 12 months or they may not have had a full housing needs assessment, HNA, for which there are waiting lists. Thus some households clearly at risk may fall through this vital safety net for administrative reasons.
Many members will be familiar with the habitual residence condition, HRC. However, an additional criterion for qualifying for certain social assistance payments was introduced in May 2004. Since its introduction there have been changes with regard to family payments for those from the European Union and the European Economic Area member states, which we welcome. However, this condition continues to have very real implications, especially for those from EU-EEA member states with no work history and for non-EU-EEA nationals. The HRC is having a particular impact on the following groups of people: those with limited or inconsistent work history; those who were employed and had assumed their employer had filed appropriate documentation on their behalf who, since becoming unemployed, have discovered this is not the case; people who came to Ireland in pursuit of a better life for whom things may not have worked out; and those who meet the HRC criteria but concerning whom the guidelines are being misinterpreted.
A study undertaken in Dublin in one week in December 2006 identified that 283 EU-ten migrants were using homeless services. Of those, 170 agreed to participate in a survey. This survey looked a range of factors, including housing status, and found high levels of housing instability, homelessness risk and homelessness, as is shown in the accompanying table. If members look at the bottom of the table they will see that 36% reported they had applied for State assistance but were rejected. In addition, in Counted In 2008 — The Rough Sleeper Findings, which are confined to Dublin, 110 people were identified as sleeping rough in the Dublin area. This is down from 185 in 2005. However, there was a large increase in the number of non-Irish nationals who reported sleeping rough — from one in ten people, or 9%, sleeping rough in 2005 to two out every five people, or 37.6%, who reported sleeping rough in 2008.
The implications are that the HRC is putting people at risk of homelessness and is causing homelessness. This is increasing pressure on already stretched homelessness services. There is inconsistency in the interpretation of the rules and guidelines surrounding the HRC. There is no reference to the habitual residence condition and its implications for homelessness services in the national homelessness strategy or the implementation plan. This issue is not being addressed in any meaningful way at a policy level.
I will now hand over to my colleagues, Ms Marlene O'Connor, the chief executive officer of Galway Simon Community, and Mr. Tony O'Riordan, chief executive officer of Midlands Simon Community, who will talk members through a number of case studies which demonstrate the impact of these changes.