Presentation given by Daithi Downey, Dublin Homeless Agency, Ireland at a FEANTSA seminar on "Key elements for a successful local homeless strategy: How Europe can support local authorities to improve the fight against homelessness", hosted by the Committee of the Regions, June 2007

1. Key Elements for a Successful Local
Homeless Strategy
How Europe can support local authorities to improve the fight against homelessness
EU Seminar organised by
FEANTSA
&
EU Committee of the Regions
Brussels, Friday 1 June 2007
Session 1: Institutional Context

2. Moving on up?
How addressing homelessness at the local
level can influence national strategy
Presented by
Mr. Dáithí Downey
Deputy Director,
Head of Policy & Service Delivery
Homeless Agency

3. Background to our story……
• Irish economic context:
– Tiger Economy (’96 –’01) Economic growth and wealth creation, Asset (housing) and
Consumer boom (’02- present), Credit growth (equity withdrawl), Euro zone impact.
• Irish social context:
– Higher prosperity, deepened inequality, ‘crisis’ in social infrastructure and protection, housing
access and affordability
• Irish political context
– General election 2007
– Social partnership agreement for 10 years: Towards 2016

4. Irish national policy on homelessness
• Homelessness – An Integrated Stratey (2000)
– Homeless Agency Partnership (2001)
– Establishment of 34 Local Homeless Forums (2001)
• Homelessness Preventative Strategy (2002)
– Inter-agency protocols (e.g. discharge policies and procedures)
• Review of Homeless Strategy (2006)
– Extensive and in depth stakeholder analysis including service users
– Comprehensive suite of recommendations
• Revised Government Policy and Strategy (Qtr 4 of 2007)
– 5 priority areas: provision of long-term accommodation; appropriate local treatment of
homelessness countrywide; case management approach for homeless individuals; improved
coordination of capital and revenue funding; and better data on the extent, nature and causes of
homelessness.

5. Institutional network for Homeless Agency Partnership
Government
Cabinet Sub-Committee on Social Inclusion
The Cross Departmental Team on
Homelessness
(Depts. Family & Social Affairs, Environment (chair),
National Homelessness
Health & Children, Finance, Education & Science,
Consultative Committee Community & Rural, also Irish Prison Service and the
2007 Probation and Welfare Service)
NGO Statutory Sector
•
• Irish Prison Service
Sector • Education and Training
HealthAuthorities
•Community & •
• Local ServiceWelfare
Probation and
Exec
• FAS
Voluntary
•Housing
Associations

6. Extent of ‘assessed’ homelessness?
Counted In, 2005
– Third periodic assessment on homelessness in Dublin conducted
as part of the national tri-annual Assessment of Housing Need
1. 2,015 individuals reported being homeless
2. 1,552 adults reported being homeless
3. 19% decrease on number of people
reported as homeless between 2002 and 2005

7. National/Local Inter-relations:
how is partnership working in Ireland?
• Irish Social Partnership model is c. 20yrs old – institutionally and politically
established at national level and deployed as local area-based partnerships
– Political and administrative focus on inter-agency partnership working at the local
level across key areas including: drugs; spatial depreviation and urban regeneration;
labour market activation; and local anti-poverty and community development work.
• Homeless Agency (HA) Partnership is an example of ‘joined-up government’
at local level that includes the Third sector (NGO)
• HA Partnership is more than a straightforward one-to-one partnership
arrangement
– Composed of many actors operating in and across a complex network of relations

8. Making and managing change within
and across partners
• Active network management is required to make complex
partnerships work
• Means active hierarchial steering and process management
across the partnership
– HA Board, Consultative Forum, Executive and Service Provider
Networks
• Ability to recognise uncertainty and complexity in
decision making:
– Institutional (e.g. Irish Cabinet Sub-Comittee on Social Inclusion)
– Strategic (e.g. national policy frameworks)
– Content (e.g. HA action plan)

9. The realpolitik of making it work
• Extent of hierarchial steering (national and local)
• Extent of active network management: incentives for
actors with differences in power and frames of reference
• Negotiating shared goals: perceptions and behaviour of
actors is important
• Negotiate and agree ‘joined-up thinking’
• The win? Agreed aims, actions and timelines for same –
the ‘action plan’

10. The ‘win’ of partnership working..
Three Homeless Agency Action Plans to date:
1. Shaping the Future 2001-2003
2. Making it Home 2004-2006
3. A Key to the Door 2007-2010

11. Agreed vision
By 2010, long-term homelessness and the need for people to sleep rough
will be eliminated in Dublin
The risk of a person or family becoming homeless will be minimal due to
effective preventative policies and services
Where it does occur, homelessness will be short-term and all people who
are homeless will be assiated into appropriate housing and the realisation
of their full potential and rights

12. Agreed strategic aims
• Prevent people from becoming homeless
• Provide effective services in each local area to
address the acciommodation, housing and health
needs of people in that area
• Provide long-term housing, with appropriate
supports as required for people who are homeless

13. Future challenges…
• Changing profile and support needs of people experiencing
homelessness
– (women, families with children, single adult men, migrants, young
persons and the elderly)
• Improve access to permanent long-term housing and deliver new
social housing stock
• Access to mainstream primary healthcare, in particular mental health
and addiction services
• Effective prevention of homelessness
• Delivery mechanisms – funding regime and agency function

14. Local impacts nationally…internationally?
• Key Homeless Agency milestones achieved since 2000 –
– Building confidence in the Vision for 2010
– Re-inforced importance of hierarchial steering and active network and
process management within HA Partnership
– Continued political support and resource allocation
• Homeless Agency action plan to 2010
– Example of best-practices locally that can be adopted nationally
– New National Homeless Policy and Strategy (in 2007)
• Role of EU to support local actors?
– Hierarchial steering required from EU on homelessness
– Supra-national national local
– Example: EU typology of homelessness and housing exclusion –
ETHOS model.