Seven projects across Scotland are to receive funding from a £1million homelessness prevention fund created by the Scottish Government.
The Scottish Federation of Housing Associations and Homeless Network Scotland are jointly administering the Upstream Homeless Prevention Fund.
The successful projects form a learning programme running from June 2025-April 2026, with an overarching aim to prevent homelessness by funding tenancy sustainment and early intervention activities.
Funded activities help tenants remain in their homes, and the pilots will add to learning about the role of Registered Social Landlords (RSLs) in delivering new ‘Ask and Act’ homelessness prevention duties in the Housing Bill.
The projects support new and existing partnerships between RSLs and the third sector to provide community-based activities dedicated to tenancy sustainment. Each local partnership includes a cash fund to enable individual cash payments of up to £1,300 to practically help people avoid or exit homelessness.
The successful homelessness prevention projects are:
- Orkney Housing Association Housing First Orkney (Orkney Isles)
- Aberdeen Cyrenians Aberdeen Tasking & Activation partnership (ATAP) (Aberdeen City)
- West of Scotland Housing Association Ready, Steady, Roots (Glasgow, North Lanarkshire, South Lanarkshire, East Ayrshire, North Ayrshire, South Ayrshire)
- Fife Housing Group Fife Housing Alliance Tenancy Support Project (Fife)
- Sanctuary Housing and Community Connector (Dundee)
- West Granton Housing Association Get Settled Archie project (Edinburgh)
- Berwickshire Housing Association Domestic Abuse Tenancy Support Project (East Scottish Borders)
The fund will promote learning ahead of implementation of the Ask and Act duties, which will require a wider range of ‘relevant bodies’ to be involved in preventing homelessness.
It is supporting RSLs, the third and community sector to understand respective roles and connections to other relevant bodies and test local route maps to the new prevention duties. In doing so, the fund is supporting understanding of the role of housing associations to:
• Ask about housing circumstances through existing functions.
• Act on the information received to prevent homelessness or mitigate risk by using existing powers.
• Refer to local authority for homelessness assistance, if necessary, rather than by default.
The Fund will be accompanied by a programme of peer learning sessions and a final evaluation in 2026 that SFHA/HNS will make available to the wider memberships.