Almost 18 months after declaring a housing emergency and amid spiralling homelessness in the capital, Edinburgh Council is taking the kind of bold action needed to address the problem – an emergency brake that will create breathing space to fix a system in meltdown.
Councillors approved a suspension of council homes letting policy to reserve almost all properties for people experiencing homelessness.
As the proposal stated, in the last twelve months Edinburgh City Council has breached its statutory duty to provide accommodation on 3,263 occasions, a rise of 115% in a year. The proposal rightly recognised that “Doing nothing is not an option”.
People who are experiencing homelessness are the worst hit by the housing emergency, and this emergency situation requires an emergency response. That is why we strongly support this prioritisation of housing allocations for people who are homeless. This is the right way to go if local authorities are to stop breaching people’s legal right to housing. And it is the way for councils to escape the trap of spending hundreds of millions of pounds on poor quality temporary accommodation in low quality hotels and B&Bs that no one wants or benefits from other than private owners.
We urge other councils facing similar pressures to do the same.
We also urge registered social landlords to explore how they can use their resources to prioritise people who are homeless in the midst of the housing emergency.
For at least the period of the housing emergency, a significant increase in the allocation of all available housing to households who are homeless needs mandated by Scottish Government. In the areas with the greatest pressures, this needs to go beyond current convention and apply to the development of new builds and to the acquisition and allocation of existing homes.
Doing so will reduce homelessness, and free up more quality temporary accommodation in communities, preventing people, families and kids being stuck in those hotel and B&B rooms.
Importantly, this move can also give the system more flexibility to make sure people have a safe place to sleep rather than having to use a communal ‘shared air’ night shelter or sleep rough. We need to accelerate these actions now, so that adequate accommodation can be accessed during the critical winter months, in Edinburgh and Glasgow especially.
Prioritising housing for those experiencing homelessness is a legal and moral imperative and an urgent emergency response. But let’s be clear: a functioning homelessness system should serve as a safety-net for when homelessness has not been prevented, not a primary pathway to stable housing. While a functioning housing system would place affordable housing within everyone’s reach in Scotland.