Category: News

Homelessness is neither a personal choice or inevitable

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Homeless Network Scotland’s chief executive Maggie Brunjes, and Prof Andrea E Williamson from the University of Glasgow co-authored an editorial in the British Medical Journal (BMJ) published this month.

It highlights the stubborn collective consciousness that continues to divorce homelessness from the larger health and economic inequality that causes it – and encourages health professionals to adopt an ‘inclusion health’ approach that can help reduce the unacceptably poor health outcomes among people affected by homelessness. Find the BMJ article here.

Read the full article here

Homeless Network Scotland response to Scottish Budget cuts on affordable housing

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Homeless Network Scotland is deeply concerned by cuts to affordable housing spending announced in the 2024-2025 Budget. This comes despite consistent and united warnings on the urgent need to tackle a spiralling housing crisis which is holding back people and communities.

Without more homes, we exclude thousands of people in Scotland from equality, opportunity and community – the three priorities of the Scottish Government’s budget.

The UK Government has not helped the situation by reducing capital funding in real terms to Scottish Government. But the Scottish Government has chosen to cut further, putting paid to any real prospect of ensuring everyone in Scotland has the home they need. 

Cutting investment in affordable housing by £200million is unexpected and puts the government’s affordable housing building targets at risk. This decision risks undoing all the progress Scottish Government and its partners have made towards ending homelessness and rough sleeping in the last decade.

Maggie Brunjes, chief executive of Homeless Network Scotland said: “There is no route towards ending homelessness that doesn’t include building more affordable housing.

“We can’t prevent homelessness without more homes. We can’t scale up Housing First without more homes. We can’t get kids out of temporary accommodation.

“We can’t get single men out of hotel rooms, B&Bs and other inadequate temporary places. We can’t prevent destitution among people seeking sanctuary or to settle in Scotland. And we can’t end poverty and child poverty without more homes.

“The Scottish Government has previously shown bold commitment to ending homelessness through the ambitions set out with COSLA in the joint Ending Homelessness Together Plan.

“Adequate long-term funding is needed to ensure all those ambitions become reality and avoid slipping backwards after years of progress. It would be a tragedy to see that happening in the same year that a Housing Bill containing hard-wrought new prevention duties is introduced to parliament.”

The Scottish Government’s continued support for Rapid Rehousing and Housing First approaches – which get people out of temporary accommodation quickly and help people facing multiple disadvantages by providing flexible wraparound support along with a settled home – is welcome.

But both these strategies need long-term investment so local authorities can make them work – and evidence has shown time and time again that they do work. But most of all, they need housing.

Scottish Government, local councils and charities almost ended rough sleeping during the Covid lockdown in 2020. And through careful planning and reprovisioning, the same partners enabled the safe closure of the remaining ‘shared air’ dormitory-style night shelters in Glasgow and Edinburgh.

Three years later, rough sleeping is on the rise along with the threat of unregulated, unsafe night shelter provision re-emerging – and this time without the support of the wider homelessness sector.

This provides an illustration of what lies ahead. Poverty drives homelessness when housing supply doesn’t meet demand. The risk of rough sleeping increases for those at the hardest edge of inequality.

Scotland has some of the strongest homelessness rights anywhere and the Scottish Government can be proud of that record, as well as progressive changes to income tax announced in the Budget, which are a step towards creating the fairer society we all want. Against a backdrop of constrained funding, making better use of the tax levers already within its control is more important than ever.

Failing to provide adequate resources now, for the solutions to ending homelessness which we know are within our grasp, means thousands of people will continue to wait for settled housing, and all the associated health and wellbeing benefits that brings.

It is vital that we all now work together to maximise what we can do with the resources we have – and to find new investment opportunities for housing in Scotland. Scottish Government needs to look at what needs to be done to meet housing need and to tackle poverty and how to achieve this as a matter of urgency.

Scottish Government commissions monitor on homelessness

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  • Ending Homelessness Together Monitor created to chart impact of national policy
  • Data demonstrates how mix of poverty, inequality and lack of affordable housing drives homelessness
  • Framework will use lived experience to gauge progress towards people-centred systems

A coalition of experts has called on local and national government to adopt a groundbreaking new tool created to measure progress being made towards ending homelessness in Scotland.

The Ending Homelessness Together Monitor is designed to report on indicators that reflect the entwined and predictable causes of homelessness including poverty, inequality, labour markets and welfare levels as well as housing supply and affordability.

A report from the Measuring Impact Task and Finish Group, appointed by Scottish Government and COSLA, states that this evidence will show how wider factors drive homelessness and help decision makers to allocate the right resources and services to maintain progress towards ending it.

But the report published today said the experiences of people and families must also be part of the bigger picture alongside a suite of robust data and evidence.

Insight into the reality of services from All in For Change, a platform for people with lived experience of homelessness, defined factors that matter on the ground including how people were treated and the quality of services they used, while priorities for keyworkers included pay and caseload levels. These inputs will enable the monitor to measure progress towards more person-led services.

New data sets will also allow the monitor to show the impact of the new prevention duties on public sector bodies, due to be written into law in the Scottish Government’s forthcoming Housing Bill.

The new framework has been developed to measure progress towards commitments in the Scottish Government and COSLA joint Ending Homelessness Together Plan. It will use and improve existing housing and homelessness indicators, while also plugging data gaps.

Strategic outcomes of the monitor include providing sufficient social and affordable homes; fewer households and children in poverty; decreasing homelessness; equality in housing outcomes; more choice and control for people in services and a more equipped and enabled workforce.

The key recommendation in the Measuring Impact Task and Finish Group’s final report is that the Scottish Government, COSLA and local partners adopt the monitor.

Housing Minister Paul McLennan said: “I am very grateful to the co-chairs, Maggie Brünjes and Gavin Smith, and to the other members of the group for the time and consideration they gave to this particular challenge.

“We want to get better at measuring progress towards ending homelessness in Scotland and understand how our interventions are helping people. We also want to maximise the impact of every pound spent on preventing and ending homelessness. We will consider the group’s report and recommendations very carefully and respond in due course.”

Maggie Brünjes, chief executive of Homeless Network Scotland and co-chair of the group, said: “The Ending Homelessness Together Monitor will enable us to better measure, across a carefully selected set of indicators, whether we are getting closer to ending homelessness in Scotland.

“This has been an important collaboration across academia, policy, government and the third sector. Gathering knowledge of what matters on the ground to people is vital, and the input of All in For Change will help to ensure that we put people at the heart of measuring progress.”

Group co-chair Gavin Smith, chair of the Chartered Institute of Housing Scotland and service manager at Fife Council, said: “The wider structural causes of homelessness clearly demonstrate that the housing and homelessness sectors do not hold all the levers needed to end homelessness.

“It follows that this framework shows how complex factors create unique experiences of homelessness. The monitor will provide robust evidence of policy impact and progress, helping decision makers to direct resources and tools in a targeted way, so we strongly recommend that it is adopted next year.”

The monitor and report have been submitted formally to the Scottish Government and will go out to the wider public sector for consultation on implementation early 2024.

The group’s report and monitor are available here.

Everyone Home urges budget focus on homelessness and housing

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A coalition of organisations including the Everyone Home collective has urged the Scottish Government to use the budget to address a growing housing and homelessness emergency. 

Forty organisations wrote an open letter to Finance Secretary Shona Robison calling for urgent support to address an “escalating homelessness crisis”. 

They warn that although the Scottish Government has made strong commitments to ending homelessness over the past few years, growing demand and limited resourcing has left local authorities unable to cope.

Read the full letter

All in for Change hailed for 3 years of action and influence

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People with personal and frontline experience of homelessness are influencing Scottish Government policy and inspiring organisations through their work on Homeless Network Scotland and Cyrenians’ All in for Change programme, a report into its first three years shows.

The Change Team works collaboratively with decision makers to develop homelessness policy and one of its biggest successes has been developing the ‘Ask and Act’ prevention duties proposed for public bodies, due to be brought into law.

Other significant achievements since 2019 include influencing policies around rapid rehousing, helping to end the Local Connections policy and giving evidence to MSPs as part of development of the National Care Service.

Policy workers who engaged with the Change Team reported that their unique insight into what works on the ground and impartial input had added credibility to their own work by strengthening the evidence they use to design and improve services.

They said working with Change Leads – including paid Associates with Homeless Network Scotland – helped foster culture change in their organisations, furthering a shift towards prevention and participation informed by the programme’s 4 New Directions to end homelessness.

All in for Change was also credited with overturning stereotypes of people who have experienced homelessness, and Change Leads said their experiences had helped their wider work as they felt respected and “listened to”, boosting their confidence and self-esteem.

The findings emerged in a survey and interviews with Change Leads and policy staff for the report ‘Hitting Home the Message’, an evaluation of the programme to date.

All in for Change was created to help achieve policy objectives set out in the Scottish Government-COSLA joint Ending Homelessness Together Action Plan.

Key aims of the programme, facilitated by Homeless Network Scotland, Cyrenians and Scottish Community Development Centre, are bringing about co-ordinated working between different services and ensuring support services take a person-centred approach.

Respondents to the report said more urgent change is needed to connect services and create ‘No Wrong Door’ for people – and that more support is badly needed for those in support roles.

David Ramsay, Impact Lead at Homeless Network Scotland, said: “The Change Team has demonstrated time and again the value of co-developing policy and service design with people who know what works on the ground. They can sense-check policy to guard against complacency.

“Every policy worker interviewed for the report said they would engage with the Change Team again. This speaks volumes about the power of the team to break down barriers in the policy landscape.”

The report also commends the Scottish Government’s Homelessness Unit for enabling and funding the programme and makes a series of recommendations at national, local and programme level.

These include broadening the scope of the Ending Homelessness Together Action Plan to include poverty and inequality – the overarching drivers of homelessness – and for local authorities and health and social care partnerships outside Glasgow to explore local platforms for lived experience.

Change Leads on the Prevention Commission made a significant contribution to the new Housing Bill due to become law in this parliament by coming up with the ‘Ask and Act’ recommendation, which requires relevant public bodies to ask people about their housing situation to identify issues early -and then act to support them.

The team also identified the unfairness and ineffectiveness of the now-removed Local Connections policy, which restricted access to local services to people who could prove they had a connection to the area, and helped the Scottish Government finalise new guidelines on the Unsuitable Accommodation Order.

One policy officer said: “It’s not a box ticking exercise. Every time we’re working on a new policy, the Change Team are part of that. It’s becoming embedded in a lot of our work.”

Another said of the team’s wider influence: “Engaging with the Change Team allowed me to help us understand the difference between active engagement with a particular demographic versus public engagement, which is a far more generic thing. We’ve seen organisational change as a result.”

Read the report and recommendations here