The number of families becoming homeless in Dublin every month has recently doubled from eight to 16, homeless charity, Focus Ireland, has warned.

It is calling on the Government to ease austerity and ‘put people first' in next month's Budget.

According to the charity, seven new people become homeless every day in Dublin, however support services are already struggling to cope, particularly with the increasing number of families becoming homeless.

In its pre-Budget submission, entitled Put People First, the charity suggests a number of measures that could be taken to help protect these vulnerable people. These include:
-An investment of €400 million to help build social housing in Dublin. This would also create construction jobs
-No more cuts in funding for homeless services
-Ensuring that family and child income supports are not reduced for low income families.

The charity emphasised that the recession has pushed many families and single people into homelessness and the situation is worsening, with almost one in five of all mortgage holders in arrears and thousands more people in rent arrears.

"The continued failure to provide affordable housing is also keeping many families and single people trapped as homeless - staying in unsuitable and expensive emergency accommodation," Focus Ireland explained.

It said that Budget 2014 must ‘kick start a process of reform', which helps people avoid or escape from homelessness.

"The last five budgets have been dominated by numbers and the impact on the lives of real people has been ignored. We can't continue with just relentless austerity measures. We need urgent investment in housing as there are now over 100,000 households on housing waiting lists. We also need steps taken to protect people struggling on low incomes or welfare so we can prevent people from losing their homes," commented the charity's director of advocacy, Mike Allen.

Last year, Focus Ireland supported 8,000 people, compared to 6,500 in 2010 - a 23% increase. It is urging people who are having difficulties to contact it or other services such as MABS (Money Advice and Budgeting Service).

"If the coming Budget fails to protect the most vulnerable in our society I think this will add insult to injury in the eyes of many people as at the same time, the Government has shelled out €220 million in service charges to the EU and IMF for drawing down loans under the bailout, in addition to the €1.4 billion handed over in interest payments alone last year on the bailout," Mr Allen added.

For more on this charity, click on focusireland.ie