Cope Galway has advised the Government on a range of measures to tackle the city’s worsening homeless emergency.
Describing the current crisis as “unprecedented”, Martin O’Connor of Cope Galway said there has been an “extraordinary deterioration” in the problem on the ground.
The charity points out there are 50 homeless families, including up to 100 children, and 45 single people in emergency accommodation. On any given night, up to 50 more men, women and children are sleeping rough on the streets.
“This is an unprecedented situation in Galway,” Mr O’Connor said. “The most obvious manifestation of the crisis are the numbers of people who can be seen bedding down in shop doorways in the city centre at night time, but what most people in our community don’t realise is that there are also so many people, families and single person households, trapped in emergency accommodation for weeks and months at a time as they cannot find and secure housing.”
He said the city’s homeless service is “stretched to breaking point”, sparking fears about a further deterioration this Autumn and Winter.
“There is a lot of really good work happening in terms of intervening early to help prevent someone becoming homeless and there is a steady stream of allocations of social housing, but it feels that this is hardly making a dent on the large numbers coming through our doors,” said Mr O’Connor.
In a pre-budget submission to Finance Minister, Pascal Donoghue, the charity has called for a cash injection to tackle the problem.
“Funding levels for homeless services in Galway have been largely stagnant over the past number of years despite the increasing levels of demands. Without the generosity of the people of Galway through their support of our work it would not be possible to do as much as we are doing. We are now calling on our Government to provide us with the necessary additional funding to address the ever-growing demands on services,” Mr O’Connor said.
■ For more on this story, see the print edition of the Connacht Tribune.
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