Madam, - Your Editorial "Homeless Progress" (May 26th) suggests reasonably that we should be prepared to acknowledge progress when it occurs. It goes on to suggest that we should adopt that attitude to the recent survey produced by the Homeless Agency, carried out 15 months ago, which suggests things are improving in this area.
However, like many people working at the front line in providing health and social services for people who find themselves homeless, we find the survey does not reflect the reality we meet every day as the numbers coming to us are going up instead of down.
It is impossible for a survey which seeks to discover the true situation of the most vulnerable to ever capture their reality - not least because in our experience many of those who find themselves excluded have a problem not only about form-filling but even the prospect of facing anyone asking questions.
Meanwhile, your Editorial on "Social Housing" (May 29th) makes grim reading and presents a compelling analysis of what is wrong with our housing policy. In particular, you rightly draw attention to the fact that the figures mask considerable social hardship, overcrowding and the despair of many young families.
Figures by their nature can never really reflect human suffering but they can reveal the politics behind the policy and your suggestion that it is a case of the Department of the Environment unloading the cost of social housing on to Social Welfare is insightful. Indeed the Department is also offloading its housing responsibility to the voluntary sector.
We will continue to criticise the management philosophy in charge of housing, health and social services, which is based on benchmarks and performance indicators geared to arrive at quantitative measures of the human conditions - which are not possible.
The latest survey from the Homeless Agency is a symptom of that culture. The late journalist and writer Maeve Brennan, who had experience of homelessness, put it very well when she said that "home is a place in the mind".
Unless we focus on treating people as people in the first instance and not as statistics that need to be slotted into boxes we will not succeed in making life better for anyone. - Yours, etc,
ALICE LEAHY, Director & Co-Founder, TRUST, Bride Road, Dublin 8.