Homeless families in hotels and B&Bs will be counted in the census later this month, for the first time.
While hotel and B&B guests are counted with an individual form returned for each, the Central Statistics Office has devised a strategy to identify homeless households effectively living in hotels, while maintaining their privacy.
Deirdre Cullen, senior statistician on the census at the CSO, explained three enumerators had been "embedded" with the Dublin Region Homeless Executive (DRHE) to work with them and agencies such as Focus Ireland to ensure census forms were hand-delivered to all families in emergency accommodation.
“This census is different from 2011 because, although we did count homeless families then they were generally in emergency accommodation purposely provided for homeless families.
“The big difference this time is this additional sector, the large-scale use of hotels and B&Bs.
New group
“If we didn’t capture this population we would be missing a whole new group of the population. The big challenge has been how to capture this sensitively.”
The CSO had been working with agencies “for about 18 months” on this, she said.
Each hotel guest will fill in a census form or where necessary have one filled in for them.
Homeless households will fill in the same form, but, as with all households, theirs will have space for the details of all household members and their relationships to each other.
These will be collected by dedicated enumerators and “we will have ways of knowing which forms refer to homeless households when they come back into us,” said Ms Cullen.
“The data will allow us to identify the circumstances of families, such as how many are headed by lone parents, how many have children with disabilities, [and] how far they have to travel to school or work.”
Census 2011 identified 249 homeless families, with 498 children.
The most recent figures, for January 2016, found 884 families with 1,830 children in emergency accommodation across the State.
‘Not definitive’
Mike Allen
, director of advocacy with Focus Ireland, said though the census would not provide a “definitive” figure on homeless families it would be an “important contribution” and would provide robust and important data such as the ages of parents and children.
“Homelessness is a very complex and fluid concept. It will be impossible to get all families, for instance those who are staying with extended family.”
Ms Cullen agreed not all homeless families would be enumerated, and said the very term homeless meant different things to different people.
While some families staying with extended family might see themselves as homeless, she said, others might be offended to be described as such.
Rough sleepers will also be counted, with CSO staff participating in the DRHE’s spring “rough-sleeper count” timed this year to take place on census night.
Ms Cullen said a first report on Census 2016 would be published around July, with a full report by April next year.
