One year on from when all local authorities were meant to have a homeless action plan, one-third still have none. The late Miriam McCarthy, a worker with the Dublin Simon Community, explaining about the homeless people she met on the streets, wrote that: "My men are law abiding, more sinned against than sinning, dreamers and poets and gentle people, the victims of the avaricious unjust. I think St Jerome knew the aggressor well, 'show me a rich man' he said, 'and I will show you a thief'. My men are innocent."
To anyone who has worked with people who are homeless, it is unnecessary to defend their innocence. Inter-generational poverty, unhappy events in childhood or family breakdown later in life are often at the root of the person's homelessness. In this emotionally vulnerable state, the person is forced to move from location to location. They stay in unsafe and unhealthy conditions on the street and in hostels and B and Bs and unless their housing and health needs are addressed, become more and more socially isolated.
Instead of placing blame on the person, one is left with a sense of admiration for their courage and ability to survive the most testing situations. People who experience homelessness are more than willing to stand on their own two feet. The problem is that the foundations on which they stand are so insecure and unstable.
The most basic foundation in someone's life and literally and metaphorically the building block for Irish society is a safe and affordable house. Over the last decade we have experienced a major increase in demand for housing and a total failure to respond in kind. From spiralling homelessness, to meeting social housing building targets, to regulating the activities of landlords, to achieving sustainable development, government has failed at every turn.
Homelessness will not be addressed until there is a coherent housing policy. Currently, housing policy is going around in circles. In reintroducing interest relief on borrowings in the last budget, the Government completed a full reversal of its Bacon measures. Taking into account building inflation, the Government Estimates signal a de facto decrease in expenditure on social housing.
We are now back to the position we were at the start of the housing crisis, except that there are even more people on social housing waiting lists and housing is even more unaffordable.
An even more direct example of Government failure is that one year on from the deadline for the completion of Homeless Action Plans in each local authority area, one third of local authorities still have not completed their action plans. Considering that these pledges were made in May 2000, it demonstrates the Government's low priority for homelessness. The two-thirds of Homeless Action Plans that have been completed are a mixed bag. While some are good - although still just plans - many others are very poor. They avoid making any commitments and are really political documents to avoid censure.
What is uniformly disappointing about nearly all the action plans is that the Government commitment that local authorities "provide a certain proportion of their lettings" to homeless people has been ignored by them. Only two local authorities have complied. The failure to allocate fair amounts of local authority housing for those people staying in hostels means that hostels will stay full up and people will be forced to sleep on the streets and stay in accommodation that is unsafe and unhealthy this Christmas.
This is fundamental to how we address homelessness. Are we merely going to build more shelters - which are expensive to run, unacceptable to many local people, and condemn the people living there to permanent exclusion from mainstream society - or are we going to allocate fair proportions of normal housing to those without a home?
Where to from here? The first need is probably for a housing executive, along the lines of the executive in Northern Ireland, to supervise the delivery of State-funded housing. It is too easy to criticise the housing officers in local authorities for their failure to develop and implement homeless action plans.
Many are doing excellent jobs but they are overstretched. They need the support of a housing executive to support them in developing and implementing their action plans. Considering the amount of waste in the present system it may be the cheapest investment the Government ever makes.
The second step is to set local and national targets to reduce homelessness. Our neighbours in Finland have shown us the way on this. They halved the number of people homeless over seven years by building more single person accommodation and allocating it to people without a home.
Finally, we need to open our own mindsets. Homelessness is less about personal inadequacy and more about social exclusion. Homeless people do not need our charity, they need justice. Only when we have stabilised the housing situation of those people without a home can they start to address whatever other issues are in their lives.
In a world knotted in hatreds and aggression and a host of follies, grand and mean, what right have we to look down on those whom we have excluded from "normal" society?
Emmet Bergin is research and social policy co-ordinator for the Simon Communities of Ireland