Workers are busy at a reopened residential construction site in Dublin, Ireland, April 12, 2021. (Xinhua)
Latest data from Ireland's national statistics bureau CSO showed that the residential property prices in the country increased by 15.2 percent in March this year compared with a year ago.
DUBLIN, May 27 (Xinhua) -- There were 10,049 homeless people in Ireland as of the week ending April 24, 2022, an increase of 224 people compared to a month ago, said the Irish Department of Housing on Friday.
This is the first time that the number of homeless people in the country has crossed over the 10,000-mark since February 2020, said Dublin Simon Community, a charity for homeless people in Ireland, in a statement.
"People are getting evicted from properties either because the landlord is selling up, or because they've fallen behind in their rent...", Mike Allen of Focus Ireland told the Irish national radio and television broadcaster RTE.
Allen is a member of the management team of Focus Ireland, a Dublin-based nonprofit organization which provides services for homeless people in Ireland.
He called on the government to do something immediately to keep people in their homes while in the long run building more homes.
A rough sleeper is seen on a street corner in downtown Dublin, Ireland, Nov. 30, 2018. (Xinhua)
Latest data from Ireland's national statistics bureau CSO showed that the residential property prices in the country increased by 15.2 percent in March this year compared with a year ago.
The CSO figures also showed that since early 2013 the residential property prices in Ireland have more than doubled.
In Dublin, home prices have risen nearly 123 percent from February 2012 when the local property market crashed to its lowest point in the wake of the international financial crisis around 2007.
House rents in Ireland were almost 12 percent higher in the first three months of this year compared with a year earlier, said Daft.ie, Ireland's largest property website, in a recently released report.
Earlier in a statement, the Irish Department of Housing said that the growing number of homeless people is a serious concern and it is trying every means to address the problem.
A woman takes photos of a building covered with red leaves in Dublin, Ireland, on Oct. 18, 2020. (Xinhua)
The statement said that the government provided 9,183 new social homes in 2021, an increase of 17 percent over 2020, and that it will deliver 11,800 social homes this year. ■
