With Christmas Day drawing near, Ireland confronts a new year frustrated by what has proved a persistent homelessness crisis. Official figures now report almost 17,000 people in Ireland without a place of their own to call home—more than 5,000 of them are children. These numbers are almost double what they were five years ago.
Though they may appear small in an American context, in Ireland those numbers represent the “highest level of adult and child homelessness in modern history,” according to Sinn Féin’s housing spokesperson Eoin Ó Broin.
Housing has been in crisis for over a decade in Ireland, where homelessness is a particularly potent political issue. Ireland’s Easter rebels were keenly alert to the centuries of colonial domination and were particularly concerned to assert rights around land so that future Irish citizens could be securely housed. The founding proclamation of the 1916 rebels (whose rising on Easter Monday that year is seen as the catalyst for eventual Irish independence) promised to “cherish all the children equally.”
Even when Ireland was one of the poorest nations of Europe, housing provision remained a central achievement of successive governments. It is a case of deep popular unrest now, when Ireland is among the wealthiest nations in the world, that the Irish state seems incapable of fully addressing this basic need.
The housing activist, Peter McVerry, S.J., explained in a conversation with America that “homelessness is only the most extreme and visible consequence of a dysfunctional housing system.”
The problem expands far beyond “poor” people who are at risk of homelessness, he says. It affects “middle-class young people who are still living with their parents because they can’t find accommodation to buy or rent, along with workers who are priced out of the market and students who have to commute long distances to their colleges.”
Father McVerry has been working with homeless people for half a century and remembers that “in 1975, this country built 8,500 council houses,” as public housing is described in Ireland. “In 1985—and remember we had a deep recession in the ’80s—we still built 6,900 council houses.”
But in 2015, Irish authorities built just 75 council houses, beginning a shift from state provision of housing to surrendering that social obligation to market forces. That was a policy change he describes as “ultimately ideological,” arguing that housing opportunities for the wealthy began to be prioritized over the needs of the many.
Today, that means that much of the housing market is tilted towards “foreign investment vehicles” that seek “maximum rent and maximum resale value of houses.” In lieu of building more council houses, the government policy has been to subsidize rent in the private market, pitting welfare recipients against better-off working people and driving up prices for everyone.
Father McVerry laments that “we are now paying private landlords 2 million euros every day to accommodate low income families in private rented accommodation. And at the end of the year, almost a billion euros spent, and the state has nothing to show for it.”
A compounding factor is the prevalence of short-term rental properties. He notes that on an average day in Ireland, there can be “nine times more Airbnbs advertised” for rent than there are private long-term rentals. All this adds up to a situation where the most vulnerable people in Irish society—the young, the elderly, women and immigrants—are being locked out of affordable housing.
Exacerbating the problem of homelessness is a very visible increase in “rough sleeping,” those who are without a home and who are left out of the typical homelessness services. This very visible form of homelessness is more prevalent in part because of a government policy that requires young single men seeking asylum to “demonstrate need” before they can be considered for housing in the refugee system.
Considering the scale of the problem, it could be time for civil society actors to intervene and press for a change in that policy. But whatever contribution such voices could make toward a solution for Ireland’s housing woes has been weakened by the passing of a legendary social activist, Stanislaus Kennedy, R.C.C., “Sister Stan,” as she was known, was a Sister of Charity famed for her groundbreaking work on behalf of those who were marginalized in Irish society.
She was seen as a “leading advocate and activist for change, working tirelessly to support the homeless, immigrants, and those in disadvantaged communities throughout Ireland and beyond,” according to a remembrance published by the Sisters of Charity.
Former President Michael Higgins published a statement describing her contribution to Irish society as profound. “Telling the truth of inequality required a woman of immense courage and vision. She was that,” he said.
Some of Sister Stan’s initiatives include the Sanctuary, a spiritual retreat center in the heart of Dublin city, the Immigrant Council of Ireland and, most famously, the housing charity, Focus.
Focus was initially established as a response to Sister Stan’s own research into the particular difficulties facing women who experienced homelessness in Dublin in the 1980s. Building on that foundation in research and advocacy, Focus has now grown into one of Ireland’s leading providers of services to those who are without a home, with projects across the country.
In an interview with America, the archbishop of Dublin, Dermot Farrell, described Sister Stan as someone who embodied “preaching justice as a constituent part of the Gospel.” Her life “translated that into action rather than just words,” he said.
Archbishop Farrell says he had been familiar with her work, especially in the city of Kilkenny, even before her efforts attracted widespread acclaim in the late 1980s. He remembers how “she made a huge impact…in working in the whole area of provision for social housing.”
A key element of her ministry was that it went beyond advocacy for people affected by homelessness, offering “practical supports” to help them find and remain in new housing.
The market mistake
Irish society has lost a champion for justice, but Archbishop Farrell believes that Sister Stan built institutions that would persist long after her. And, he says, “there are others that would be inspired by her legacy and would take up the mantle.”
But regarding the housing and homelessness crisis, he anticipates no miraculous solutions in the near term. Like Father McVerry, he recalls a time when a reliance on housing development by local authorities had served as the foundation of the national housing strategy, an approach that ensured that people who would be priced out of a market-based system could still access a secure and stable home.
As Ireland embraced neoliberal economic strategies in the late 1980s, Archbishop Farrell says, this central commitment to universal housing was phased out, with the hope of incentivising more private enterprise. “I think that was probably a mistake that we left housing basically to the market.”
But he is encouraged by the direct involvement of Christian social initiatives in assisting people struggling with homelessness. “The St. Vincent de Paul [society] is probably stronger today than it ever was…the Legion of Mary and the various housing trusts—all of these have grown to meet a need.”
Indeed, his own archdiocese has established an extensive array of social interventions through its Crosscare initiative. “Here, in my own garden, we have a center which provides homes for 60 families who are transitioning to more stable accommodation,” Archbishop Farrell says.
In 2018 Irish bishops issued a pastoral letter, “A Room at the Inn?”, addressing the problem of homelessness and calling for renewed commitment to housing for everyone in the state. They insisted in that document that “a secure place to live with dignity is the just entitlement of every human being” and offered an array of recommendations for how this could be achieved.
Among them the bishops urge an increase in social housing provision, strengthening the protections offered to those who are renting and providing state support to return derelict properties to meaningful use.
In many ways, the pastoral letter can be read as an indictment of the state’s acceptance of structural injustices in the housing market. Catholic critics of Irish housing policy argue the crisis represents a systemic repudiation of the preferential option for the poor, a core pillar of any society that Catholics can call just. In his exploration of this principle in “Sollicitudo Rei Socialis,” Pope John Paul II explicitly named the homeless as people who require particular attention.
Quoting Pope Francis’ remarks on his 2018 visit to Dublin, the bishops wrote:
We wish to state unambiguously that we Christians must do all within our power to improve the current situation in which tens of thousands of people live without homes or in inadequate or unaffordable housing, for in the homeless and the poor, “it is Jesus who comes.”
The Irish bishops wrote that the provision of housing “cannot be left solely to the market; that housing should not be treated in the same way as any other commodity; and that housing policies should recognise the rights of families and seek to bring about greater equality in our society.”
“Homelessness,” they wrote, “is one of the most destructive, unacceptable and inevitable outcomes of the housing crisis.”
Looking to America
The problem of inadequate housing is not unique to Ireland, but widespread across Europe and the United States. The European Union has begun a new initiative to address the problem and intends to release an affordable housing plan in early 2026. Irish housing activists have looked beyond their borders for models of effective coalition building to confront homelessness and non-profit affordable housing development.
Kevin Nye is a writer and housing advocate working to build a national coalition of religious bodies committed to addressing this problem. He suggests that the first step involves a shift in perspective away from the notion that “homelessness is a result of personal failure and personal choice.”
For him, the data is clear: The crisis is directly linked to the absence of affordable housing. That suggests that part of the solution is to build more high-quality homes and make them available at prices people can afford. Mr. Nye contends that housing is an issue churches should be eager to engage with.
“The Bible is just so deeply concerned with where people live and how—and what conditions they live in,” he said. The issue is not one of charity, but solidarity, one that demands a structural response to systemic marginalization that inevitably results when profit drives the state of a nation’s housing stock.
In the course of his housing activism, Mr. Nye describes running into churches and Christian organizations that were doing remarkable work to make affordable housing available. But, he said, “I just kept noticing that they didn’t know each other.” He believes only good could come of seeing those local housing initiatives networked across the country—a U.S.-style religious housing coalition adapted to Irish circumstances.
He hopes to launch the first “National Homelessness Sunday” on May 3, 2026. Mr. Nye envisions it as “a galvanizing event to get as many churches as we can to talk about homelessness on the same day.” He hopes the event will lead to a dramatic expansion of the National Faith Coalition to End Homelessness.
Heading home?
Father McVerry recalls that he often found himself as the only “visible Christian leader” at large public protests about the housing crisis.
He thinks that it would be a mistake to imagine that it is “the responsibility of the church” to come up with a solution. But there is a place for religious people to be more vocal about the connection between housing and human dignity.
“Protest is always a very valid form of pressure on the government,” he says. A national faith coalition to end homelessness in Ireland might tap into the widespread discontent about this growing injustice.
The Catholic Church in Ireland—and, indeed, the Anglican Church of Ireland—own vast tracts of land across the island. These assets have not always been used to support those in poverty.
Sister Stan once recalled, “I wrote a paper saying the church had resources and it wasn’t using them for the poor.” Her contribution was not well received.
Sister Stan maintained that the problem of homelessness was not unsolvable if state actors were willing to pitch in with sufficient social solutions, including public housing options.
She wrote almost a decade ago that it is “to our horror and shame” that Irish society continued to evade the responsibility of state intervention in the housing crisis. In the new year, the most enduring way to honor the legacy of this “intransigent woman,” as she was described by a former Taoiseach, the late Charlie Haughey, may be to go beyond a provision of survival services, but to embrace a true systemic conversion.
“Christmas is the worst possible time” for homeless people, Father McVerry says. The sense of loneliness can be overwhelming as “homeless people are left out of” the grand celebration of feasting with family in domestic bliss. “I know many homeless people who tell me they would love to fall asleep on the first of December and wake up on the first of January. Christmas is the most miserable time for them.”
Perhaps a renewed commitment from Irish Christians—a “national coalition”-style initiative—might help those caught up in such misery. By leveraging the skills, resources and land that the church has on hand, Christians might meaningfully carry on in Sister Stan’s spirit and give homeless people new hope for the new year.
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