The Scottish Government today took important steps towards addressing the homelessness and housing crisis by promising to ramp up delivery of social and affordable homes with £768million of investment next year and £4million to fund homelessness prevention pilot schemes.
Homeless Network Scotland welcomes these commitments, which are crucial to set the foundation to improve things for people and communities now and in the long-term.
With more resources committed to homelessness and housing, we can continue to safeguard the strong legal rights to housing we all have – rights which are the pillars of those systems. Now is the time for councils to use the increased funds coming their way to prioritise resource to make these homelessness rights a reality again.
Money to boost homelessness prevention will help the government, local authorities, housing associations and the third sector to put meat on the bones of prevention proposals in the Housing Bill currently going through parliament.
This funding must be used to demonstrate how the Bill’s new Ask and Act duties, which will require a wider range of public bodies to share responsibility for preventing homelessness, will work in reality. The £4million should also be used to scale up successful prevention practice already taking place in parts of the country. Everyone benefits when homelessness is reduced.
Restoring investment in affordable housing is also welcome, particularly as the £768million announced includes a significant rise in capital spending on the homes we need.
We applaud the political leadership behind this action, at a time of fierce and justified competition for spending – this is the right move to benefit people and communities in the long term. Last year’s £200million cut was the wrong decision and only stored up problems for the future. There is no way to ending homelessness that doesn’t involve building sufficient social housing for people.
This time last year our sector and the people we support were dealt a severe blow in the Budget. Since then, the housing emergency has deepened and homelessness in all its forms including rough sleeping has continued to rise.
The promise of progress offered by the Scottish Government in this Budget is welcome but represents just the start of the much bigger investment in housing and homelessness that is needed to transform Scotland into a place where everyone has a home.
Read the Scottish Government’s 2025/26 Budget statement.