There will be lots of long faces in homes this weekend, as the summer that once seemed endless rolls relentlessly to a close, and school beckons once again, writes Breda O'Brien
For many pupils, there is at least the consolation of the prospect of meeting their friends. The rituals of going to friends' houses that were suspended during the holidays will begin again. Or rather, they will for some kids. There are 1,405 children who are officially classified as homeless, and who eke out an existence in B&Bs.
For them, the prospect of having friends around is laughable. Some will not even be attending school regularly, much less engaging in peer bonding. In addition, there are 48,413 eligible households on the social housing list. Many of these are currently in sub-standard accommodation.
Threshold estimates that there are 50,000 children in those 48,413 households. There are also significant numbers of children of asylum-seekers living in hostels. Still more unfortunate are those known as separated children. They are under 18, are outside their country of origin, and are separated from their parents. They are more likely to be battling depression than inviting people round for tea to their hostels.
The need for a stable home is very deeply-rooted in children. The first need is for emotional stability and reliable care, but it is very difficult to provide any of that when there is no guarantee of a secure and long-term home. The misery of traipsing from place to place cannot be overstated. Children who take a home for granted consider a McDonald's meal a treat, though their parents may be more dubious about it.
In contrast, children who are away from home long for a time when they can eat meals which are not fast food. For some children, it can come as a nasty surprise when the place they have come to regard as home unexpectedly disappears.
Take Carol, a lone parent who lived in the same flat in Dún Laoghaire for 12 years, and who was recently given four weeks' notice to quit without any explanation from her landlord.
Her two children are settled in schools in the area, and she does not want to move them away from everything that is familiar to them. Currently, she is number 50 on the waiting list for homeless people in Dún Laoghaire, which means that she has more chance of being resettled on Mars than in the area she has lived in for 12 years. There is little comfort for Carol or her children in the National Action Plan Against Poverty and Social Exclusion 2003-2005 published this week.
It confirms that the Government focus is very firmly on affordable housing. The plan pledges to "increase on an ambitious scale the supply of affordable housing for those unable to purchase a house from their own resources".
Given that 85 per cent of those on the social housing lists have an income of less than €15,000, the concept of affordability does not apply to them.
It applies instead to those who before the current boom in house prices could have reasonably expected to own a house of their own without having to resort to an affordable housing scheme.
The plan to build 10,000 affordable homes represents an attempt to compensate for the fact that there was precious little for the ordinary worker in the last pay round.
There are major question marks over the ability to deliver 10,000 homes, but at least there appears to be some political will to do something about it. Social housing, where ownership is retained by the local authority or housing organisation, has no such political commitment behind it. Not surprisingly, the promised 41,500 starts on local authority housing by 2006 are already way behind target.
The middle classes talk about money for rent as money down the drain, but there is surprisingly little protest about the money down the drain because the Government pays millions in rent supplement to recipients of social welfare.
This goes directly into the pockets of owners of private rental accommodation. This incredibly wasteful system just succeeds in keeping poor people in a ghetto with the grottiest accommodation.
Of the some 4,000 units in the private rental sector which were inspected last year, 2,000 were found to be sub-standard, which means that they were damp, or lacked basics such as hot water and proper sanitation. Young couples are being advised now to buy second-hand houses to avoid the possibility that they will be living beside people who received housing during the State's short-lived insistence that 20 per cent of all new developments should be allocated for social housing.
It is easy to forget that a change in circumstances, such as a marital breakdown or unemployment, could mean that the very people who are being urged to avoid social housing like the plague suddenly will be in need of it.
We are extraordinarily snobbish about social housing, yet the facts are that most such estates function well. The real problems arise where there has been bad planning, most notoriously in the high-rise and poorly-resourced developments where tenants with the most difficulties were clustered.
Elsewhere, traditionally close bonds between generations were broken when people were relocated miles from extended families, with little or no access to public transport. Yet, even in spite of this, most such estates eventually settle and become good places to live, with some infamous exceptions, which unfortunately continue to colour people's perceptions of social housing. This is not a battle for scarce resources between the middle classes and the poor, a clash between affordable and social housing.
The extraordinary profits which people can generate from the sale of land for building push housing beyond the reach of young people. The same problem hampers the building of decent social housing.
Funny, isn't it, that the very people who grow apoplectic at the suggestion that housing is a right which should be enshrined in the Constitution, are very quick to insist that they have absolute rights as owners of private property, no matter how such alleged rights affect the common good. Until there is a will to tackle such vested interests, thousands of children will continue to have nowhere that they can truly call home.