DUBLIN - There were 10 049 homeless people in Ireland as of the week ending April 24, 2022, an increase of 224 people compared to a month ago, said the Irish Department of Housing.
This is the first time that the number of homeless people in the country has crossed over the 10 000-mark since February 2020, said Dublin Simon Community, a charity for homeless people in Ireland, in a statement.
Mike Allen of Focus Ireland told the Irish national radio and television broadcaster RTE: "People are getting evicted from properties either because the landlord is selling up, or because they've fallen behind in their rent..."
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Focus Ireland is a Dublin-based non-profit organization that provides services for homeless people in Ireland.
Allen called on the government to do something immediately to keep people in their homes while in the long run building more homes.
The latest data from Ireland's national statistics bureau CSO showed that the residential property prices in the country increased by 15.2% in March this year compared with a year ago.
The CSO figures also showed that since early 2013 the residential property prices in Ireland have more than doubled.
In Dublin, home prices have risen nearly 123% from February 2012, when the local property market crashed to its lowest point in the wake of the international financial crisis around 2007.
House rents in Ireland were almost 12% higher in the first three months of this year compared with a year earlier, said Daft.ie, Ireland's largest property website, in a recently released report.
Earlier in a statement, the Irish Department of Housing said that the growing number of homeless people is a serious concern, and that it is trying every means to address the problem.
The statement said that the government provided 9 183 new social homes in 2021, an increase of 17% from 2020, and that it will deliver 11 800 social homes this year.
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