CITY TRIBUNE
Homeless hub marks new era in housing
The Peter McVerry Trust has been at the forefront of the fight against homelessness in the capital for almost 40 years. In recent years, it has widened its scope by expanding to the regions and last month, opened its first facility in Galway.
The launch of the Modular Family Hub in the Westside heralds the start of a new chapter in rowing back the tide of homelessness that the city has been dealing with for the past decade – with the Peter McVerry Trust hoping to assist with the Trojan work already being done by charities such as COPE Galway and the Simon Community.
CEO of the Trust, Pat Doyle, says the hub – consisting of fifteen self-contained modular build units – is just the start of their work in the West, with work already underway to source homes for purchase and establish a regional office in Galway City.
The €1 million Family Hub, which welcomed its first families over the past couple of weeks, is made up of two and three-bed modular homes to provide transitional accommodation to families as they seek to find secure accommodation – keeping them out of emergency accommodation and avoiding its many pitfalls, as Pat explains.
“The Westside Family Hub was a pilot project with the Department of Housing and Galway City Council, and we were asked to come on board as partners. The units have a 60-year lifespan and meet all the needs of families.
“We have a family resources unit on-site that’s staffed 24 hours a day, where there’s a family consultation area where we can work with families to arrange move-ons and put in place supports,” says Pat.
The facility is fully equipped with outdoor and indoor children’s pay areas, laundry facilities and each unit has a kitchen and space to allow normal family life to carry on – giving children space to do their homework that they wouldn’t have if they were living out of a hotel room.
“We did some work with families looking at their experiences of emergency accommodation in hotels and B&Bs and the experience for them is traumatic. We asked what the most difficult part of it was for them. Families told us that having no facilities to cook was a particular challenge, and if there was somewhere, they might only have access to it once a day.
“They also told us one of the things was having no facility to do laundry. It can be very expensive to be homeless when you have to send out your laundry all the time to get it sorted, or if not, you’re trying to wash it in the en suite bath,” Pat explains.
The Peter McVerry Trust has fifteen family hubs across Ireland in Dublin, Meath, Louth and now Galway – and they have proven very effective.
“What we made sure we had in all of them was to have separate sleeping accommodation for children so Mam or Dad, or Mam and Dad, had a separate sleeping space – one woman told us that the night she moved in, it was the first time in months that she didn’t have to go to bed at 8pm because her and the children weren’t in the same room,” says Pat.
The charity’s first hub was at Hazel House in Glasnevin where it has thirteen units. Nine families moved through the unit on to more permanent accommodation within six to nine months last year, leading Pat to believe that the Galway facility, with its fifteen units, could see 30 families access secure accommodation within a year.
“The next challenge, once the families are in the hub, is helping them to move on.
“There is a heating and electricity meter in each unit so that residents can learn skills, if they haven’t already got those budgeting skills. Each family will pay a differential rent,” says Pat, explaining that the amount paid is assessed in the same way as rent is calculated by local authorities.
Part of what the Peter McVerry Trust does is to ensure that there is adequate suitable accommodation for families to move into, and through building, buying and leasing properties, families with significant challenges are catered for by the charity as an approved housing body, says Pat.
“Sometimes there are significant challenges, for example, sourcing a five-bed house, or there could be other issues that might make moving-on from a hub take a bit longer. One family might need a house for a person with a disability, but the average is six to nine months.
“If we have a family in Galway who has a particular difficulty, we will buy, lease or build a property. We have identified five potential building sites in Galway and we already have a line of sight to a number of key properties in Galway for purchase. We haven’t landed them yet, but they’re identified.”
When the Peter McVerry Trust went into Limerick in 2016, it had two properties – it now has 50 and is in the process of adding another 40 to that portfolio.
“Our job in Galway will be to lend a hand to the local authority to build and buy property to assist with the housing waiting list,” says Pat.
Galway suffers the same issues as many cities, where there is a shortage of accommodation due to it being a university city with a large hospital – two elements that put severe pressure on the housing market.
“We’re only there [in Galway] about a month but we are hoping over the next few years to develop a portfolio of 100-plus properties. We’re also identifying an office in Galway and we’re in full consultation with the local authority.
“We also do a number of re-builds – there’s a scheme called the Repair and Leasing Scheme. There are a number of properties in need of renewal in Galway and you enter a contract with the Council to do that work, but the landlord must lease it back for at least ten to twenty years and it has to be social housing,” says Pat.
The Trust has already identified a brownfield site in the city for development, he adds. “We identify opportunities and bring them to the Council to see if it can be made to work.”
Reflecting on the current circumstances in light of Covid-19, Pat says it’s inevitable that there will be an impact on housing – with building costs likely to increase by ten to fifteen per cent, but it was a question of priorities for the incoming government.
“In the election, people made clear they want a good-quality health service, good-quality social housing and more of it,” he says, but adds that it will be challenging.
Please remember that without advertising revenue and people buying and subscribing to our newspaper, this website would not exist. You can subscribe to the Connacht Tribune or Galway City Tribune HERE.
From the Galway City Tribune – An impassioned plea for a ‘masterplan’ that would guide Galway City into the future has been made in the Dáil. Galway West TD Catherine Connolly stated this week that there needed to be an all-inclusive approach with “vision and leadership” in order to build a sustainable city.
Deputy Connolly spoke at length at the crisis surrounding traffic and housing in Galway city and said that not all of the blame could be laid at the door of the local authority.
She said that her preference would be the provision of light rail as the main form of public transport, but that this would have to be driven by the government.
“I sat on the local council for 17 years and despaired at all of the solutions going down one road, metaphorically and literally. In 2005 we put Park & Ride into the development plan, but that has not been rolled out. A 2016 transport strategy was outdated at the time and still has not been updated.
“Due to the housing crisis in the city, a task force was set up in 2019. Not a single report or analysis has been published on the cause of the crisis,” added Deputy Connolly.
She then referred to a report from the Land Development Agency (LDA) that identified lands suitable for the provision of housing. But she said that two-thirds of these had significant problems and a large portion was in Merlin Park University Hospital which, she said, would never have housing built on it.
In response, Minister Simon Harris spoke of the continuing job investment in the city and also in higher education, which is his portfolio.
But turning his attention to traffic congestion, he accepted that there were “real issues” when it came to transport, mobility and accessibility around Galway.
“We share the view that we need a Park & Ride facility and I understand there are also Bus Connects plans.
“I also suggest that the City Council reflect on her comments. I am proud to be in a Government that is providing unparalleled levels of investment to local authorities and unparalleled opportunities for local authorities to draw down,” he said.
Then Minister Harris referred to the controversial Galway City Outer Ring Road which he said was “struck down by An Bord Pleanála”, despite a lot of energy having been put into that project.
However, Deputy Connolly picked up on this and pointed out that An Bord Pleanála did not say ‘No’ to the ring road.
“The High Court said ‘No’ to the ring road because An Bord Pleanála acknowledged it failed utterly to consider climate change and our climate change obligations.
“That tells us something about An Bord Pleanála and the management that submitted such a plan.”
In the end, Minister Harris agreed that there needed to be a masterplan for Galway City.
“I suggest it is for the local authority to come up with a vision and then work with the Government to try to fund and implement that.”
The new Salmon Weir pedestrian and cycle bridge will be officially opened to the public next Friday, May 26.
Work on the €10 million bridge got underway in April 2022, before the main structure was hoisted into place in early December.
A lunchtime tape-cutting ceremony will take place on Friday, as the first pedestrians and cyclists traverse the as-yet-unnamed bridge.
The Chief Executive of Galway City Council, Brendan McGrath, previously said the bridge, once opened, would remove existing conflicts between pedestrians, cyclists and traffic “as well as facilitating the Cross-City Link public transport corridor over the existing 200-year-old bridge”.
The naming of the new bridge has been under discussion by the Council’s Civic Commemorations Committee since late last year.
One name that has been in the mix for some time is that of the first woman in Europe to graduate with an engineering degree – Alice Perry.
Ms Perry, who was from Wellpark, graduated from Queen’s College Galway (now University of Galway) in 1906. The university’s engineering building is named in her honour.
The bridge was built by Jons Civil Engineering firm in County Meath and was assembled off-site before being transported to Galway. Funding for the project was provided in full by the National Transport Authority and the European Regional Development Fund.
(Photo: Sheila Gallagher captured the city’s new pedestrian footbridge being raised on the south side of the Salmon Weir Bridge in December. It will officially open next Friday, May 26).
From the Galway City Tribune – Minister of State for Local Government and Planning, Kieran O’Donnell was labelled a “disgrace” for overturning councillors’ decisions to rezone land in the new City Development Plan.
Minister O’Donnell (pictured) confirmed in a letter to Council Chief Executive Brendan McGrath last week that he was reversing 25 material alternations made by councillors to the CDP 2023-29. He made the decision on the advice of Office of Planning Regulator (OPR).
Minister O’Donnell directed that 14 land parcels that were subject to land-use zoning changes by councillors as part of the Material Alterations to the Draft CDP should be reversed.
He directed that a further 11 land parcels in the city should become “unzoned”.
The Minister found that the CDP had not been made in a manner consistent with recommendations of the OPR, which required specific changes to the plan to ensure consistency with the national planning laws and guidelines.
At last week’s Council meeting Cllr Eddie Hoare (FG) asked for clarity on the process by which councillors could rezone the lands that had been changed by the Minister’s direction.
Cllr Declan McDonnell said, “What he [Minister O’Donnell] has done is an absolute disgrace”.
And he asked: “Do we have to have another development plan meeting to deal with it?”
Both Cllrs Hoare and McDonnell wondered what would become of the lands that were rezoned or unzoned by the ministerial direction.
Mr McGrath said the Council had put forward an argument in favour of retaining the material alterations in the plan, but ultimately the Minister sided with OPR.
He said if councillors want to make alterations to the new plan, they could go through the process of making a material alteration but this was lengthy.
The Save Roscam Peninsula campaign welcomed the Minister’s decision.
In a statement to the Galway City Tribune, it said the direction would mean the Roscam village area on the Roscam Peninsula will be unzoned and a number of land parcels would revert back to agriculture/high amenity.
A spokesperson for the campaign said: “the material alterations made by city councillors following lobbying by developers continued the long-standing practice of councillors facilitating a developer-led plan rather than an evidence- and policy-based plan that meets the needs of the city.
“The Minister’s direction is an important step in restoring confidence in the planning system. It is clear from the City Council’s own evidence on future housing projections that there was no requirement to zone these lands for residential purposes in order to meet the needs of the targeted population increase up to 2029,” the spokesperson added.
Families queue up for school’s offer of free house
West has lower cancer survival rates than rest
Galway minors continue to lay waste to all opponents
Gardaí and IFA issue a joint appeal on summer road safety
Marathon Man plans to call a halt – but not before he hits 160 races
