Why all the secrecy from homeless charities?

ANOTHER week and another highly regarded homeless charity sees its plans disintegrate in a welter of local resentment.

The Simon Community’s scheme for transforming two houses in Glasnevin, Dublin, into a drug treatment facility came apart after suspicious neighbours made enquiries and a meeting was hastily called with local politicians.

In the face of protests, Simon shelved its rehab clinic plan in favour of a homeless men’s shelter. Similarly the Peter McVerry Trust’s plan for a 150-bed hostel for rough sleepers on Dublin’s Aungier Street has been abandoned.

The plan was scrapped after a representative of the Peter McVerry Trust encountered hostility during a community meeting to address concerns about the hostel.

In both Aungier Street and Glasnevin, residents and local businesses felt railroaded by charities who failed to adequately inform them and consult them.

The reality is that there are several homeless hostels in the Aungier Street area, and a homeless hub in Glasnevin. Neither of these communities need lectures about how wellrun facilities for homeless people are. They know that once proper supports are in place, everyone rubs along well together. But ghettos which change an area are a different story. And as the Department of Justice learned through its effort to accommodate refugees, so is secrecy.

It would be tragic indeed if the country’s best-loved charities squandered their hard-earned social capital by failing to talk to ordinary people.

➤➤ NOW that the Toy Show is over, hopefully that’s an end to the debates about whether it’s more about toys or precocious children, raising squillions in revenue for RTÉ or giving our children a taste of the bizarre world of pre-internet entertainment when entire families gathered around the television set for hours on end. Who cares about its raison d’etre? Surely the Toy Show’s still being a talking point is what counts.