Number of homeless women almost doubled in the last two years

Focus Ireland marked International Women’s Day last week by highlighting a 96 per cent increase in the number of women homeless in Ireland over the last two years.

The charity said that in January 2015 there were 1,017 women homeless, but by January this year this had nearly doubled to just under 2,000 (1,997) women homeless in Ireland.

In this same time the number of men who are homeless has shot up by 40 per cent from 1968 to 2763.

Focus Ireland Director of Advocacy, Mike Allen, told The Echo: “The housing crisis has seen the crisis continue to grow to unprecedented levels as a record number of 7,167 people are now homeless in Ireland. One of the striking aspects of this is the increasing and terrible burden of homelessness that is visited on women and children.

“Latest figures show women now account for 42 per cent of number of adults homeless, and this has increased from 34 per cent over the last two years alone.”

Mr Allen said there is practically no mention of women in homelessness policy.

He added: “We need government housing and homeless policy to have greater acknowledgement of the often specific pressures that effect women and can cause them to become homeless.

“This would help all work towards preventing homelessness from happening in the first place or, where it does occur, to ensure that it is for as short a time as possible.”