The national housing and homeless charity, Peter McVerry Trust, has announced that it grew its housing stock by 40% in 2018. It comes as the charity turns the sod on a new social housing development of 8 apartments at New Street South in Dublin 8 today.

The charity has also published its annual report for last year and revealed that it worked with 5,841 people in 2018 providing over 5,500 of those with shelter or housing.

The charity’s CEO Pat Doyle said “For the past number of years we have been focused on growing our housing stock to provide more pathways out of homelessness. We are committed to the Housing First model and housing-led response to homelessness but the only way we can ensure that we can deliver on those approaches is if we are constantly increasing our housing stock so more people can leave homelessness behind for good.”

“While we grew our residential units to almost 400 residential units across the country in 2018, we still need to secure significant increases in housing delivery this year and next to help those in need. We expect that we will now significantly exceed our target of 450 units by the end of 2020 which was set in our strategic plan back in 2016.”

“Once we house people we are really effective at keeping them there. Our housing support teams made over 39,000 support visits to our tenants last year. Those visits are critical for sustaining tenancies, ensuring people can progress to education and employment and that the adjustment from hostels to homes goes as well it possibly can.”

The charity, which was active in 14 local authorities across Ireland in 2018, is working with more people than ever before. The majority of those that the charity supports are young, single men with an average age of just 32. The charity reported that it had helped 418 people exit homelessness in 2018. It also opened a new North East Regional Office in Drogheda in September 2018 supporting people in Cavan, Louth and Monaghan.

Peter McVerry Trust was established in 1983 and marked 35 years responding to the needs of those on the margins of Irish society in 2018. It provides a wide range of services across prevention, housing, homelessness, U18s residential services and drug treatment services.

Peter McVerry Trust’s Annual Report 2018 can be read in full here.