28th September 2018
Peter McVerry Trust, the national homeless and housing charity, officially opened its North East Regional office in Drogheda. The office which will serve the Louth, Cavan and Monaghan areas was opened by local Fine Gael TD, Fergus O’Dowd.
The CEO of Peter McVerry Trust is Pat Doyle and he said the charity is looking forward to working in partnership with the local authorities to tackle homelessness in the region.
“Peter McVerry Trust’s approach to the issue of homelessness is to do what we can, when we can, where we can. We believe we bring a huge amount of expertise to the region and in particular our work with single people, people exiting prison and families. We will be complementing rather than replicating existing services and we are already engaging with our colleagues in Drogheda Homeless Aid and Dundalk Simon.”
The charity has actually been operating in the North East since September 2017 supporting single people and people exiting prison. “Since we began operating our tenancy sustainment and support service in the region last September we have progressed 36 people into a new home and now has a workload 41 open cases. We have carried out over 200 support appointments, 600 one-to-one visits and 1,200 calls.”
“We have had a very positive relationship with Louth County Council, who lead the delivery of homeless services in the region and we are working closely with them to identify the needs of people impacted by homelessness in the region.”
“Our goal will be to roll out a housing led response here in the North East and we are working on a number of potential housing projects that will enable us to offer new homes to people currently accessing homeless services. We hope to rapidly ramp up our housing provision.”