The number of people becoming homeless as a result of being evicted from private rented accommodation has increased by nearly one-third in the past year, according to figures in an unpublished report by Focus Ireland.
The housing charity also found that the proportion of homeless people using its services who were in employment had increased from about 4 per cent of the total last year to over 20 per cent this year.
"It has become so impossible to find flats for our clients," said Mr Kieran Stenson, manager of Focus Ireland's crisis-desk, "that we are closing our flat-finding service from January 1st."
The data for the internal report were gathered by the charity's crisis desk during June this year and compared with the same period last year.
Some 111 people used the crisis desk this June. Of these "between 25 and 30" had been evicted from their private-rented accommodation, either because of a rent increase, the end of their lease, or because the property was being sold. This compared with "about 20" last year.
Mr Stenson said the findings "provide further evidence that there's a serious lack of provision in both emergency and permanent accommodation by the Irish State."
The private rented sector was no longer a viable housing option for an increasing proportion of people, he said.
"The situation is that the landlord sells the property, or puts up the rent and the tenant cannot get another flat because rents have increased so much. If they are working they can't get rent allowance. And it's almost impossible to get them alternative housing."
"We wrestled with closing the flat-finding service for three years, but reality is that we were managing to find maybe two flats every six months. It became too soul-destroying for our clients and our staff, and the service just wasn't producing results."
Currently some 120,000 people are on housing waiting lists.
