Victory For Home Sweet Home As Apollo House Occupation Set To End

As already reported on hotpress.com, the Home Sweet Home occupation of Apollo House is set to end on Wednesday. Negotiations took place over the past week between the occupiers, the Department of the Environment and Dublin City Council. And the result is that the authorities have committed to providing additional accommodation for the homeless in two separate hostels in Dublin.

Among the crucial agreements is that hostels will now provide all-day accommodation, rather than seeing those who are homeless turfed out into the street every morning.

The Home Sweet Home campaigners, including singer Glen Hansard, were given assurances that the 39 people currently housed in Apollo House will be provided with alternative accommodation.

The Home Sweet Home group, who are behind what has been a very successful intervention in the ongoing crisis, said today that they had secured two new homeless hostels, at a cost of over €4m. These new facilities will include improvements for those who are staying there. Residents will be given their own keys; and there will be private rooms as well as facilities for couples.

Campaigners also insisted that this is not the end of their work. They plan to mount a legal challenge to ensure that the right to housing – which they say is enshrined in the Constitution – is recognised and ate on by the State.

Meanwhile, the Minister for the Environment, Simon Coveney, stated that tackling homelessness is a priority for the Government. He insisted that there is enough emergency accommodation to meet current demand. However the provision of an additional two facilities will clearly help alleviate further hardship.

The Minister also restated the Government’s commitment to ending emergency hotel accommodation for families by the middle of 2017.

Hot Press says about today's developments: There is no doubt that the Apollo House intervention has changed the game, where homelessness in Ireland is concerned. While the Department of the Environment may argue that they had already planned that two new facilities would be opened in the near future, the terms of the accommodation being provided to those that need it have changed considerably. There are many problems associated with homelessness – but there is no doubt that stripping people of their dignity is among the most insidious.

As a result of the occupation of Apollo House, a new focus has emerged on the rights of people who, for one reason or another, become homeless. In today’s announcement, there are important concessions, which afford a different kind of personal respect to those who are dependent on facilities of this kind.

The first is that they will be given their own keys. This might seem like a small thing, but it is not. The individual who has to seek emergency accommodation of this kind should not be forced to surrender their freedom. In this new dispensation, they are no longer being required to.

The provision of dormitory-style facilities may suit sone residents – but it does not suit all. It is therefore a significant improvement also that private rooms will now be available in the new facilities.

And finally, the agreement to provide facilities for couples is also a major breakthrough. The emphasis – in many respects a legacy of the religious domination of the provision of facilities for the homeless in the past – on people effectively surrendering their right to a private life was an affront to people’s dignity and sense of self-worth. It was as if being homeless had to mean an end to a couple’s sex life. Well, that archaic view has now been successfully challenged.

People who are – or who became – homeless should not be denied basic human rights. They are entitled to food, to shelter, to dignity, to their bodily integrity, and to the right to carry on a relationship. Life may be tough. But it doesn’t have to be as brutal and dehumanising as so many people have found it in Ireland since the crash.

The Home Sweet Home team deserve our thanks for having won these important new conditions for the homeless.