‘Home Sweet Home’ calls for 10,000 social housing units a year

HOUSING ACTIVISTS ‘Home Sweet Home’ say they will continue to work directly with former residents to ensure their needs are being met and offer them support and assistance in building on the progress made in Apollo House.

After the majority of the remaining Apollo House residents and volunteers vacated Apollo House on Thursday 12 January, Home Sweet Home are calling on people to share their experiences and photos of homeless accommodation in order to promote minimum standards and “create a peer review forum for those using the services”.

They say they are also continuing their outreach programme which sees them deliver care packages of sleeping bags, warm clothes and food to those sleeping on the streets several nights a week.

Home Sweet Home are calling for increased building of social housing units to the tune of 10,000 per year for the next 10 years and a more meaningful contribution from NAMA towards tackling the crisis.

Spokesperson Freda Hughes said:

“The Home Sweet Home Project centred around respect and dignity for all and is about empowering people. Where the state will not intervene, its people will, and in this case people from all sectors of society have come together to fight for the right to a home – a right that this state does not fully recognise.”

She noted that fewer than 300 social housing units were built last year and the Minister for Finance said that, while NAMA will provide 20,000 houses over the coming years, only 10% of them will be used as social housing. This is in the middle of the worst housing crisis ever experienced by this state, Freda Hughes said, declaring that, with this in mind:

“It is imperative that people stand together and fight for a fair and equitable housing policy which leaves no one behind.”