In 1969 it must have looked as though homelessness could be tackled and progressively reduced, especially with governments committed to what now look like massive house-building programmes.
But the local authority building programmes of the 1970s and 1980s were among the chief casualties of the savage cuts introduced by Mr Charles Haughey's government from 1987 on in an effort to tackle the State's debt problem, and it was inevitable that homelessness would eventually become a major issue.
The economic success which those cuts helped to bring about has exacerbated the problem. Cheap bed-sitters have become a thing of the past. Flatland areas such as Dublin's South Circular Road and Rathmines are being reclaimed by families who buy houses which have been in flats for decades and renovate them as family homes.
There is another difficulty, and it is a serious one: Dublin Corporation has, in effect, run out of land on which to build houses. One housing official suggested last year that the time may have come to house Dubliners in parts of Kildare, Wicklow and Meath. The objections from locals can easily be imagined.
One outcome of all this is that there are 1,550 people, mostly women with children (over 800 children), living with friends and relatives, but in such insecure circumstances that they are regarded as homeless by the housing authorities in the three counties.
These are the people who, in the 1970s and early 1980s, could have expected to be housed.
Another outcome is that local authority housing is almost impossible for single men to get. Most of the men who used hostel or food centre services during the week of the survey - and this is the group who are traditionally thought of as "homeless" - had not applied for local authority housing. One reason for this, the report says, is that they may have seen no point in doing so. Indeed, Focus Ireland has been pointing out for some years that single, unemployed men who fall out with their families now end up in hostels or on the streets.
But there are some who have not applied for housing because they are "settled" in hostels and find this way of living preferable to moving into a local authority flat and staring at the four walls.
There are others whose life experiences have made it difficult for them to meet the norms of the wider society. Some of those who were institutionalised as children, for instance, can find it hard to live outside an institutional setting and a few have even gone from a children's institution to joining the Army and from that to living in a hostel.
Others may have suffered greatly as children and turned to drink as a result, leaving them with nowhere but hostels or the street. And a growing number of people addicted to illegal drugs is swelling the number making demands on homeless services.
Of the latter, many are barred from the hostels. Voluntary housing agencies yesterday called for services to meet the needs of this group, including those who have become drug-free. Mr Tony Geoghegan, director of the Merchant's Quay Project, pointed out that many of those who complete residential treatment and become drug-free then find themselves homeless. This, needless to say, increases the likelihood that they will return to drugs.
There is also a need for more hostel places in general. Above all, however, the voluntary agencies want a "major expansion" of social and public housing.
As the Simon Community often points out, the best answer to homelessness is a home.