Ciara Costelloe

Dublin Simon Community

Dublin Simon Community works to prevent and address homelessness in Dublin, Kildare, Wicklow, Meath, Cavan, Monaghan & Louth. We provide services at all stages of homelessness and enable people to move to a place they can call home. At Simon, we listen to people who turn to us for help and do everything we can to support them to move out of homelessness into independent living. We strive to empower people to access, secure and retain a home of their own by reducing the reliance on short-term emergency accommodation and providing permanent supported housing for people to sustain a home in their local community. Moving people into supported housing produces life-enhancing and life-saving results and is more cost-effective in the long run. The organisation was founded by a group of Trinity and UCD students in 1969, who began by providing much-needed soup and sandwiches to people who were sleeping rough in Dublin city centre. In addition to the Soup Run, which still goes out 365 nights of the year, Dublin Simon provide many services which aim to help those who are sleeping rough on the streets, people who are in their own accommodation but at risk of homelessness and those who are at any of the stages in between.