Since the 1980s the face of homelessness has changed in Ireland. What was once seen as the domain of middle-aged men and a few women has grown into the misery of men, women and children of all ages.

In 1984 there were 37 women with 93 children in hostels in Dublin, and no family was homeless for more than six months. By 1999, 660 families with 990 children (530 under five years) were assessed as being homeless in the Eastern Regional Health area.

Focus Ireland, in co-operation with the Eastern Regional Health Authority and Dublin Corporation, is currently carrying out a study of families in B&Bs, and it looks as if the situation is worsening instead of improving.

The most chilling fact is that small children are the fastest-growing section of our homeless population. Over a quarter of all homeless people in the Eastern Regional Health area are children (990 children and 2,900 adults) and more than half of these are under five.

These figures relate only to families and do not include children and young people out on their own. Neither do they include the hidden homeless families doubling up with parents, relatives and friends.

Homelessness and housing are two sides of the same coin. Where housing is insufficient, homelessness among the most vulnerable is the result. Policies encouraging home ownership for the middle classes were complemented in the past by a policy of providing housing for those who could not hope to own their own homes.

This early commitment by the State to housing provision seems to have been abandoned at crucial times. Public housing provision has been cyclical in this country, with large-scale building programmes in some years, followed by dramatic decreases in other years. Local authority housing for rent now comprises only 9 per cent of the housing stock, compared with 20 per cent during the 1960s.

In times of economic growth the demand for public housing increases. This happened in the 1990s and the demand was not met by sufficient supply. This meant that people on low incomes who should be entitled to public housing were simply not being housed.

For example, in the Dublin area from 1967 to 1987 public housing outputs accounted for 2030 per cent of total housing completions annually. Since 1987 it has been less than 10 per cent of new annual completions.

In 1999 there were over 40,000 households - well in excess of 100,000 people - on housing waiting lists in Ireland; most of these were women alone with children. These figures more than doubled within the past eight years, and not only is the list getting longer but the length of time people have to wait is also growing.

Furthermore, many people who require housing do not register with local authorities for a variety of reasons. Some are not eligible, some do not perceive themselves as eligible, some do not see the point of registering because of the long waiting list. So this figure underestimates the true housing need.

It is interesting that in the assessment of housing need, undertaken by the Department of the Environment in 1999, 88 per cent of the households seeking accommodation had incomes under £10,000. This begs the question as to what happens to households within incomes £10,000 to £20,000?

The decline in public housing has been accompanied by a decline in private rented accommodation, from 42 per cent in 1946 to 8 per cent in 1991. This decline, together with the rise in house values, has the effect of pushing rents up and out of the reach of people on low incomes. There is now a sizeable portion of the population which is not eligible for public housing and yet cannot afford either to buy or to rent in the private sector.

The sharp rise in the figures for homelessness and for those on the housing lists indicates that we now have a new homeless population, many of whom were reared in their own homes, and who expected to have their own home one day.

These homeless families are a new institution we have created, an institution which makes healthy people ill, normal people depressed and those who may have been unwell a great deal worse.

This institution, of our own invention, will, probably very soon, produce pathologies, addictions, violence and dependencies on a scale which will transcend by far whatever these families may have experienced.

Unless we deal with these families' needs now their future is fearful. What we must do is put a housing programme in place to ensure that everybody is given the basic human right to a home. This means the Government needs to build 100,000 houses for rent within the next five years. HOMELESSNESS is the concern of all of us. If one family is homeless it is the concern of all of us as citizens and it is our obligation to ensure that that situation is changed. Need, not greed, must guide us in these decisions.

The cosy practice of holding on to and developing property at the expense of the poor and the homeless cannot be acceptable in a just society.

In the meantime, while we wait for house-building programmes to be put in place, we must provide good-quality emergency, transitional and short-term housing with national information support and advice services. Particular attention needs to be given to the needs of children.

Homeless families have the same needs as you and I. They also have the same hopes, fears and aspirations. They want to give their children the best and bring them up well. But above all they want them to be contented, happy and cherished.

They are families who have fallen on hard times and they need all the cushioning they can get against the worst aspects of their situation. But there is little cushioning for these families as they are pushed by circumstances into greater insecurity and instability.

These families are the same as you and me, but a gulf divides us; the gulf between families who have a home, however modest, and those who don't.

Nobody would claim to want that gulf to exist, and these families certainly don't want the face of homelessness in the future to be their children. The challenge to change this situation is ours.