Two terraced houses in Wicklow town centre that have been turned into accommodation for homeless people were opened yesterday by President Michael D Higgins.
The facility, on Kilmantin Hill, has 12 bedrooms, a kitchen, dining and sitting rooms, and will accommodate up to 17 people for periods of up to six months.
It is a joint project between the Simon Community, which will run the facility, and Wicklow County Council, which owns the property and has also contributed €150,000 towards running costs.
At present there are "well over" 200 homeless people in Wicklow and the number is heading towards 300, according to Margaret Malone of the council's housing section.
“It is mostly families this time becoming homeless, who never expected to, [but] who are losing their private rented accommodation because rents are going up,” she said, adding that repossession of properties from landlords in default of mortgage debts was also a factor in the increased number of homeless.
Formally opening the facility, President Higgins described it as "a model partnership" between Simon and the council. "Facilities like this, and interventions like this, work so much better if you can have a viable partnership between all of the services that are addressing the issue of homelessness."
Speaking the day after two Dublin local authorities cut their property tax by 15 per cent amid accusations that services to the homeless would suffer as a result, the president, while not referring to those decisions, said: “It is important that we in Ireland realise how profound an impact on one’s life homelessness makes, and those of us who are given positions in society, what a violation of human rights is involved in terms of full citizenship if homelessness isn’t addressed.”
He said that there were some 2,500 people across the country depending on State-funded emergency accommodation “is really a society that we have to change”.
Society, he said, was not meeting the concept that should be at the heart of citizenship, “that each and every citizen be treated with dignity and respect and is empowered to participate with a voice in society”.
One of the residents, Dubliner Mark Byrne - who has been homeless since 2011 after the break-up of a relationship and who is struggling with addiction, but getting back on his feet with the help of staff at the facility - earlier lavished praise on the staff. He also read a poem for the president.
“I want to be free / From all of my sins / Guilt, Shame and Sadness!” he read, the president listening intently. “Today I am free / From the wreckage of time / And now I can call my mind / Finally free.”
The president remarked: “Patrick Kavanagh would understand that poem. It’s a great poem. I so wish you well.”
A small group of local people opposed to the facility gave the president’s party a letter of protest, describing the hostel as a “nightmare” for them, saying it brought violence, anti-social behaviour and drug use into the area.
