Housing – New Horizon Athlone

Housing is a very difficult area and NH does not have specialist skills in this area.

We usually recommend that people work with the specialist housing charities listed below.

The steps are:

Does you have refugee status or leave to remain? GNIB stamp 4? Without this it’s almost impossible to secure subsidised housing
Register on the Westmeath Co. Co housing list https://www.westmeathcoco.ie/en/media/Social%20Housing%20Support.pdf
Register with the following housing charities
- Peter McVerry housing trust https://pmvtrust.ie/ PMV have a case worker that can assist. They used to be regular visitors to Lissywollen, I don’t know if they have resumed yet.
- Sophia Housing https://www.sophia.ie/about
- Threshold Housing Trust https://www.threshold.ie/
Check out housing adverts in the local papers
Check out, and keep checking every week, the estate agents.
Check out smaller towns and villages outside Athlone. I’ve had success in Ballymahon and Ferbane recently.

FAQ’s

We are a front line refugee support group mainly working on the Lissywollen Direct Provision site in Athlone. Our focus is on providing information and help to the 300 (on average) residents living there.

We also work on the Temple Direct Provision site in Horseleap, Moate.

Everyone in the DP sites in Athlone and Temple is what is described as a ‘Convention’ refugee. People who have arrived in Ireland under a United Nations resettlement program are known as ‘Programme’ refugees.

Convention refugees are people who have made their own way to Ireland and have applied for recognition of refugee status when they arrive.

Various official and unofficial routes and methods are used to travel to Ireland. These change continually, depending on weather conditions and enforcement levels at crossings.

On arrival people are normally housed for a few weeks in Baleskin, near Dublin airport. They are then dispersed to various direct provision centres around the country.

People can get protection if they meet the conditions set out in The United Nations Convention on Protection of Refugees.

See Definition of a Refugee