Peter McVerry Trust, the national housing and homeless charity, has announced that it grew its housing stock by 40% in 2018. It comes as the charity turns the sod on a new social housing development of eight (8) apartments at New Street South in Dublin 8 this week. The sod turning will be performed by Minister of State for Housing and Urban Development, Damien English TD alongside Cllr Alison Gilliland, Chair of Dublin City Council’s Housing Committee.

The charity has also published its annual report for last year and revealed that it worked with 5,841 people in 2018 providing over 5,500 of those with shelter or housing. The Peter McVerry Trust CEO Pat Doyle said: “For the past number of years we have been focused on growing our housing stock to provide more pathways out of homelessness. We are committed to the Housing First model and housing-led response to homelessness but the only way we can ensure that we can deliver on those approaches is if we are constantly increasing our housing stock so more people can leave homelessness behind for good.

“While we grew our residential units to almost 400 residential units across the country in 2018, we still need to secure significant increases in housing delivery this year and next to help those in need. We expect that we will now significantly exceed our target of 450 units by the end of 2020 which was set in our strategic plan back in 2016.”