The national housing and homeless charity, Peter McVerry Trust, has welcomed another significant decrease in the number of people accessing homeless services. It comes as the Department of Housing, Local Government and Heritage published the December 2020 figures which showed 8,200 people in emergency accommodation, a drop of 284 people on November 2020.

Pat Doyle, CEO of Peter McVerry Trust, said “As everyone knows, 2020 was a very tough year for Irish society but to see the homeless figures drop throughout last year is really good news. Overall, we have now seen the number of people in homelessness drop from 9,731 in December 2019 to 8,200 in December 2020.”

“This is as a result of a huge ongoing focus on progressing people out of homelessness and into homes.”

“There is of course more that we can all do to tackle the issue and housing supply is key to making sure we get people out of emergency accommodation and into their own home. We hope that 2021 will be a year of approved housing bodies, like Peter McVerry Trust, continuing to grow the number of homes they provide and that we see another year of declining homelessness numbers.”

“We are delighted that Peter McVerry Trust has been able to play such a key role in partnership with the Department of Housing and Local Authorities. In 2020, we helped 1,300 people secure a home of their own. Our Housing First work, which houses the most vulnerable adults, continued to increase the number of active tenancies across 11 Local Authority areas and helped hundreds into a home in 2020.”