Council spent double their budget on homelessness last year

MAYO County Council spent double what they budgeted for on homelessness accommodation last year.

Yesterday’s meeting of Mayo County Council heard that the local authority spent €1.6 million of government money on accommodating homeless people in the county.

The council has budgeted €1.6 million for emergency accommodation for the year ahead.

As of last Friday, a record of over 13,000 people are now living in emergency accommodation, including 173 in Mayo. These include 109 adults and 64 children.

Councillors were recently told that it had seen 194 homeless presentations in 2023. This represents a sharp increase on 98 presentations in 2022 and 100 in 2021.

Cllr Kilcoyne described the figure as ‘crazy money’ that would be better spent on building houses.

Speaking to The Mayo News yesterday, Cllr Kilcoyne warned that the figure would rise unless more social and affordable housing was built.

He added that the government’s approach to housing was ‘not working at all’.

“The expenditure on homelessness is rising, that’s because of the government’s failure to build houses,” Cllr Kilcoyne said.

“The council, ultimately, should be the primary provider for people who cannot afford to provide housing for themselves.”

Mayo County Council aims to build over 1,000 houses by 2026 as part of the government’s Housing For All programme.

Tom Gilligan, the council’s Director of Services for Housing, told a previous meeting of the council that there was ‘a very active pipeline’ of social housing units due to come on stream.

There were over 2,605 people on the council’s housing waiting list in June.