It's December. That is the first unsettling point about the homelessness programme announced yesterday by Dublin Corporation and the Eastern Health Board.
We all know winter is a harsh time for homeless people. Imagine spending last night outdoors.
So one would have thought this programme would have been announced in the summer or autumn and started in November.
Instead, we are half-way through the winter, with some of the initiatives in the programme not scheduled to start until next month.
These initiatives include "outreach" (the document is rich in jargon) services which will "target" people living and sleeping rough on the streets. They will start work in January. Again, it has to be asked why this did not start happening much earlier. Would it not have been a worthy objective to have nobody sleeping rough on the streets in January 2000?
Presumably being "targeted" will result in some sort of practical help for the people concerned - but what that will consist of is unclear from the document.
Perhaps they will be helped to get some of the precious hostel and bed-and-breakfast beds vacated with the assistance of "resettlement officers". A curious title that: apparently the resettlement officers will "work" with people living in hostels and B&Bs "with the aim of moving them to more long-term and appropriate facilities". But if we had "long-term and appropriate facilities" would the hostels be full in the first place? And if we don't have these facilities, what will the resettlement officers do - join that growing army of community welfare officers and social workers who spend their days on the phone desperately, and often unsuccessfully, searching for accommodation for their "clients"?
What of the anti-ghettoisation measures? These will be implemented by "co-ordinators" (there's no doubt about it: homeless people create jobs but not, unfortunately, for themselves) who will "arrange for accommodation resources to be provided in areas outside of the city to prevent ghettoisation and to ensure that appropriate services are available locally".
How are they going to "arrange" for accommodation "resources" in areas outside the city? Book every hotel room in Bray? And how are they going to persuade homeless people to go to these areas "outside of the city"?
Perhaps one of the most "user-unfriendly" of the proposals is the opening of a centre at Conyngham Road to provide "an inter-professional and interagency service" for the homeless.
If this means homeless people will be expected to hike to Conyngham Road to apply for rent allowances and help with finding a bed for the night, it is a most unfair proposal and one that will see more people opting for the nearest doorway instead.
This "central facility" is not expected to be ready until the end of next year, so there is still plenty of time to drop the idea and find something genuinely central, (well, until the "co-ordinators" arrange to ship everybody to "accommodation resources" located "outside of the city"). More hostel accommodation is seriously needed in Dublin and in other cities, but especially in Dublin.
This plan provides for some additional places - but more could surely be provided if the money to be spent on co-ordinators, resettlement officers and the rest was instead given to Dublin Corporation for that purpose.