Jamie Bryson is the editor of Unionist Voice and a prominent Loyalist activist.

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Homelessness has been in the news a lot recently, as it deserves to be. In most normal societies, even though it’s not really polite to say so, homelessness, in the sense of people living on the streets, or very marginal accommodation, is avery different  issue to the high prices in the rental and property market, and difficulty for people in finding a place to live.

The bottom line is that, in most normal societies – to the extent that people living on the streets can be regarded as a normal thing –that type of homelessness is isn’t an accommodation issue, it’s not really a housing issue, it’s a mental health issue, often closely associated with alcoholism and drugs of abuse.

People, when threatened with losing their accommodation can usually access social services, or at worst find a friend or relative who can put them up on a couch until they get sorted. People who have addiction and other mental health issues find it much harder to do that – often because their problems have alienated them from those support networks. They have problems,we need to address those problems, but actual housing isn't the issue.

It is a sign of how serious our situation is that people who are clearly together in other areas of their lives – they have relationships,children that they care for, we have homeless children, think about that,children who are homeless – and that’s a sign of how serious the situation is.For thousands of people, the reason that they are homeless is that there just isn't a home for them.

That’s not normal by any standard.

And we have so many suggestions for a solution to the housing crisis. Podcast listeners might know about Dr Karl, if you don’t, then look him up, he’s worth it. Anyway, he’s a medical doctor, and one observation that he likes to make is that if a disease has one cure, then it probably works. If a disease has many cures, probably none of them work.

The reason is simple, if you have a cure that works, why bother researching to find a second one? And if you have more than one cure,surely one works better than the others, so why not ditch the worse ones?