A secure, affordable, decent standard home is one of the essential basic human needs and is a human right. Yet unprecedented numbers of people in Ireland are living without this secure base, a place to call home. They are homeless. The scale of this homelessness crisis is a social catastrophe which is having deeply destructive physical and mental health impacts on hundreds of thousands of people in Ireland. The homelessness crisis has become one of the foremost social policy concerns and societal crises in Ireland in recent years. Homelessness has become an entrenched social (and economic) crisis, which is now almost normalised. The normalisation of homelessness is particularly concerning as it can lead to policy lethargy and reduced public concern, and even the deepening stigmatisation of those affected by homelessness.

Despite the progress in reducing homelessness during the COVID period, in part due to specific COVID-related measures including an eviction ban, freeze on rents in the private rental sector, and use of short-term accommodation, homelessness has risen dramatically and consistently since the lifting of these measures in April 2021. Ireland now has the highest levels of homelessness on record. The number of children homeless with their families has increased by 67% in the period from September 2021 (when the Government’s Housing For All plan was released), to September 2023. Rising from 2,344 children in September 2021 to 3,904 children homeless with their families in September 2023. Overall homelessness has increased by 51% from 8,475 people in September 2021 to 12,827 in September 2023. However, this Report, Ireland’s Hidden Homelessness Crisis, finds that even these record homelessness figures are a considerable underestimate of the real scale of Ireland’s homelessness crisis, due to the failure to consider and measure many people in various forms of ‘hidden homelessness’.

Housing market and policy changes including the failure to adequately control rents, the austerity reduction in building of social housing, the shift in housing policy to source social housing from the private rental sector, the promotion of the financialisation of the Irish housing market through the rise of corporate landlords, and a policy reluctance to implement tenancy security has resulted in a rapid rise in new forms of homelessness and housing exclusion in Ireland (Hearne, 2020). Issues affecting the new “hidden homeless”—including housing insecurity, unaffordability, and increased risk of homelessness—have increased dramatically, but we find that current official homelessness data measurements are not fully capturing these new forms of housing insecurity. New types of households and demographic groups previously unaffected by homelessness and housing exclusion are now becoming, and increasingly are at risk of, homelessness. This report analyses Ireland’s hidden homelessness crisis using the framework of the European Typology of Homelessness and Housing Exclusion (ETHOS)....