Rising homelessness - Vulnerable repeatedly failed here

The great Indian nationalist Mahatma Gandhi once declared that “the true measure of any society can be found in how it treats its most vulnerable members”.

Accordingly, it would appear that we in Ireland fail to measure up to any moral yardstick when it comes to the way we deal with our weakest citizens, those in the shadows of life: the sick, the needy and the poor.

If anything illustrates the demise of the Celtic Tiger it is the growing number of homeless people seen on the streets of our towns and cities. And, according to a group that has spent 30 years working with them, the situation is worse than it ever has been.

Yet it would appear that the problem has been festering for far longer than the economic crash and that, surely, is cause for national shame.

According to the 2012 annual report of the Peter McVerry Trust, there were 5,000 homeless people in Ireland last year.

Seven new cases of homelessness were recorded every day in Dublin alone last year, but only three of those could be accommodated daily. The majority of those using the charity’s services were aged between 18 and 35, but the youngest person it assisted was only 13.

It is hard to argue with the logic of the charity’s founder, Fr Peter McVerry, who points to the failure of successive governments, who made the problem worse by not housing the most vulnerable during the boom years.

“After 30 years of working to eliminate homelessness, I believe the problem is now worse than ever, perhaps even out of control,” he said.

This from a man not known for hysteria.

According to McVerry, the failure of the Fianna Fáil and PD coalition to increase the stock of social housing to meet demand during the Celtic Tiger years resulted in an increase in the number of homeless people from 2,500 in 1996 to over 5,000 today.

Equally, the number of households waiting for social housing has increased from 25,000 in 1996 to more than 100,000.

The trust housed 155 people last year and, in conjunction with other organisations such as Simon, a total of 800 homeless people were rehoused in 2012.

But there is only so much that voluntary organisations and charities can do.

The charity’s chief executive, Pat Doyle, revealed that 50% of all cases last year involved people who had never suffered homelessness before, with early school-leavers, drug users and those in the criminal justice system most at risk.

It is to be greatly hoped that, instead of making political capital of past governments’ failures, that the coalition — Labour in particular — will be galvanised into action.

For starters, they could do worse than take the advice of another homeless charity, Focus Ireland, which has called for a €400m investment in the budget for 3,000 homes to be built to support families on the brink of losing their homes to the clutches of our bailed-out banks.

As McVerry so succinctly puts it, “homelessness is a political problem; it cannot be solved by charities alone”.