Focus Ireland launches new five-year strategy which will deliver 1,000 additional homes to help tackle the crisis
New plan aims to help turn the tide as homelessness up 108 percent since 2021
Focus Ireland today launched its new Joint Strategic Plan 2026 to 2030, Turning the Tide on Homelessness, setting out how the organisation will expand the delivery of secure, affordable homes and strengthen prevention and support services for people who are homeless and those at risk of losing their homes.
As part of the strategy, Focus Ireland and Focus Housing will acquire or construct 1,000 additional homes over the next five years, increasing Focus Ireland’s housing stock to around 2,700 well maintained and insulated homes by 2030.
Alongside housing delivery, the strategy sets clear service commitments. Over the five years of the plan, Focus Ireland aims to support 1,930 households out of homelessness into secure new tenancies, while its tenancy sustainment services are projected to support 1,750 at risk households each year.
Focus Ireland said these commitments are urgent because the national crisis has escalated sharply. Homelessness has increased by 108 percent since Focus Ireland launched its previous strategy in 2021, rising from 8,313 people in emergency accommodation in February 2021 to 17,308 people in February this year.
Launching the strategy at the Royal Society of Antiquaries of Ireland, Dublin 2, Focus Ireland CEO Pat Dennigan said the country cannot accept permanent emergency as the new normal.
“Our new strategy sets out what Focus Ireland will deliver over the next five years, including 1,000 additional homes and stronger supports to prevent homelessness and help people exit homelessness,” he said. “But the overall level of homelessness will only fall if Government matches that effort with determined implementation and the delivery of genuinely affordable homes at scale. Homelessness has more than doubled since our last strategy began, and it is now vital that Government shows far greater urgency in easing this human crisis.”
Pat Dennigan said the strategy is grounded in Focus Ireland’s day to day experience of what works.
“For most people who experience homelessness, what they need is straightforward: an affordable home and some guidance,” he said. “But our services must focus particularly on those who face barriers in accessing or sustaining a home, and on those with complex support needs. Above all, we have to keep seeing the person, not the label attached to their need.”
The strategy sets out a customer centred framework organised around five strands.
- Family homelessness
- Single people or couples without children
- Youth homelessness
- Prevention and economic homelessness
- Sustainability
Pat Dennigan said the rising numbers are not an inevitability.
“Homelessness can be ended with the right approach,” he said. “This strategy is our commitment to maximise Focus Ireland’s impact, to work collaboratively with Government, local authorities and other NGOs in the sector where that delivers change, and to keep pressing for the decisions that will make homelessness fall. By 2030 we hope we will see fewer people homeless than today, with the numbers falling month by month, and a real decline in long term homelessness, especially among children.”