Time to get rid of the Simon Community?

I recently attended the 40th Anniversary Commemoration of the setting up of the Dublin Simon Community in which I had a small part in founding. When I received my invitation I did not read it properly and assumed I was being invited to a 40th anniversary celebration and it occurred to me that there was nothing to celebrate. Why would you celebrate 40 years of homelessness and deprivation? Of course those sensible and caring people who now run the organisation had already thought of that so it was indeed a commemoration and not a celebration.

I cannot speak for everyone but certainly when I got involved 40years ago I never thought that 40 years later not only would there be a need for the Simon Community but there would never be a more crucial need. With Séamus O’Cinnéide I conducted the first census of people sleeping rough and homeless (we counted people living in hostels in the census) in Dublin City. I do not have it immediately to hand but there were roughly two hundred people counted. The surprising thing was that the biggest age cohort was the 15 to 20 age bracket. Most of the people sleeping rough or living in hostels had alcohol or psychiatric problems and most of them were over thirty five.
Forty years on the problem has become bigger and more complex. At first Simon offered soup and sandwiches now Simon offers a whole range of services from helping people sleeping rough to supporting them in jobs and accommodation.

My recollection of those early days is that there were not many people begging on the streets. I recently walked from Grafton Street to the ILAC Centre in Henry Street. I counted 23 people begging on the streets. Allowing that some of them maybe con artists and others may be professionals there nonetheless remains the truth that there are a lot more people on the streets than there were forty years ago. Walk around the centre of any of our bigger cities any night and you will find lots and lots of people sleeping in doorways and under benches. The problem was neither so obvious nor so extensive forty years ago.

Why is this when by any measure our society is much wealthier than it was forty years ago? In 1973 when we joined the EEC as it was our average income was about 65% of the EU average. Recently we were well over 100% and despite the recession we are still up there with the best of them. In the intervening period we have managed to do many things. We have become one of the most attractive locations for foreign investment in the EU because we have a well educated and trained population and we offer some fantastic tax incentives. Though unemployment is now about 12% it was at one point down to 4.5% and there are still millions of people working. We are developing our road network. You can travel from Dublin to Cork in about three hours. I could go on.

So why are there so many more people sleeping rough? Why has homelessness increased? Basically it is a matter of will. With all the wealth that became available to us we choose to use it to give tax breaks, create quangos, employ consultants and reward with high salaries those who were already doing well. Had we given homelessness the same priority that we have given to the failing banks or the building of the motorway network it could have been solved for a fraction of the cost years ago. There is no shortage of ideas. There are enough policies, people and organisations to solve the problem. It will not be solved overnight. There might be a recession now but no better time for planning for the future.

If the taoiseach cared as much about homeless people as he does about bankers and property developers there will be no need for a fiftieth commemoration of the Simon Community. So let’s start planning to get rid of the Simon as soon as possible.