New start housebuilding among housing associations has plummeted to its lowest level since 1988, official figures show. Social homes made up around a quarter of completions in 2023, a drop of 18% on the year before, and starts fell by 35% in 12 months.
Find the latest Scottish Government statistics here.
Families are increasingly benefiting from the positive impact of Housing First Scotland, figures highlighted in a new report suggest.
The annual Check-up published by Homeless Network Scotland flags up Scottish Government figures showing there are 100 children in Housing First households against fewer than five reported in 2021 – hinting at the growing scope for Housing First to reunite parents and children.
This would add to proven life-changing effects of Housing First in preventing homelessness for people who face multiple disadvantages, by providing settled housing with flexible support.
But despite these promising figures the report warns the housing crisis and current funding arrangements are “actively damaging” delivery, upscaling and staffing of Housing First – amid rising demand and increasing homelessness.
The report states: “Housing First reaches people other services have not been able to reach. All this needs a steady supply of social homes.”
It says contributors have given examples of tenants engaging in the Housing First process so they can work towards having access to their children – and in time take them out of care – but adds that more data is needed to get the full picture of what is happening.
Housing First combines settled, ordinary housing in a community with flexible support – as much or as little as needed – to help a person maintain their tenancy.
The Check-up report sets out the successes and challenges in 2023-24 of Housing First across 26 local authorities, based on insights from housing and support providers, and tenants.
The report contains 14 priorities based on themes that came up again and again – covering areas such as funding, tenancy support, partnership working and staffing.
As of September 2023, 1,646 Housing First tenancies had been started since inception in Scotland. Housing First is demonstrating that 90% of tenancies are being sustained over 12 months from entry.
But the report points to analysis by Heriot-Watt University that suggests Housing First is currently only meeting around 9% of projected demand, underscoring the need for long-term funding.
In most local authorities, funding for Housing First is aligned with transition funding from Scottish Government which is temporary in nature.
In some areas this means local authorities are unable to offer Housing First workers job security, with knock-on effects on recruitment and caseload sizes.
The report highlights the urgent need for Housing First to move toward a more permanent cycle of funding so that it can be upscaled at pace. Due to the overlapping nature of people’s circumstances, a model of funding that reaches across a range of council departments is now needed to get best results – including homelessness, community justice, mental health, drug and alcohol recovery services.
The report also points to evidence of cost savings across the NHS and wider public sector delivered by Housing First and stresses the importance of all services that benefit investing in delivery.
Housing Minister Paul McLennan said: “Providing people experiencing homelessness with accommodation first, before helping with their longer term needs, is at the heart of rapid rehousing.
“The Scottish Government’s ambition is that Housing First will be the first response for people across Scotland whose homelessness is made harder by experiences with trauma, addiction and mental health difficulties.
“I welcome this report which highlights the steady progress local authorities have made in rolling-out Housing First across Scotland, with 26 local authorities now delivering the service, over 1,600 tenancies delivered, and tenancy sustainment rates of 90%.
“It is particularly profound that enabling people to maintain settled tenancies through Housing First is supporting children to return to safe homes.
“I recognise that for Housing First to achieve its full potential, a steady supply of social homes is needed and there is more to do to ensure it is available for anyone who needs it. We remain committed to working in partnership with local authorities to achieve that ambition.”
Homeless Network Scotland chief executive Maggie Brünjes said: “Housing First in Scotland is becoming internationally regarded and our local authorities and their partners deserve huge credit for branching out Housing First in the face of housing, budget and cost-of-living crises.
“But there are thousands more people braving a range of challenges who are not getting the proven benefits of Housing First. And there are many support staff juggling complex caseloads under a shroud of job insecurity.
“This can be solved by giving more homes to Housing First and by drawing funding from across local authority budgets to mirror the range of life circumstances that Housing First meets. We can’t risk rolling back on Housing First. We need national and local leadership to help step up our efforts to extend the positive impact of Housing First to more people, families and communities.”
Housing First is helping a woman who struggled with addiction, trauma and physical abuse to maintain a tenancy for the first time and transform her life. Maxine has been in her Dundee flat for four years following several tenancies that failed due to abandonment, non-payment of rent or anti-social behaviour.
During one tenancy she was cuckooed, attacked and hospitalised, and she had spells staying in a temporary hostel which caused her further physical and mental anguish.
She moved from a hostel into a flat in 2020 with support from Transform Community Development as part of the Housing First Pathfinder it led with other local organisations from 2018 to 2021. Funds once spent on hostels are now being repurposed to develop Housing First in the city.
Despite moving closer to her mum Maxine wasn’t confident and was sceptical about the level of support she’d get – an important factor as she has fought addiction most of her adult life and suffered trauma including the overdose death of a brother.
But members of the now rebranded Housing Support Team ensured her flat was furnished and carpeted and helped her access the treatment at Dundee Drug & Alcohol Recovery Service, something she had difficulty in sustaining previously.
Maxine also got help with household budgeting and was supported to be a good neighbour and attend urgent medical appointments.
Her support level has dwindled from 20-plus hours of direct support from her Housing Support Worker each week to a couple of hours a week, and this will be stepped down to a lower-level support team in the coming months.
But if Maxine’s needs increase, she can re-enter the Housing First programme without further assessment – showing the flexibility and participant-focused nature of the support.
This approach also allows the Housing Support Team to reallocate support hours and free up a Housing Support Worker for a new tenant.
Maxine has now taken up meaningful activity including engaging with a community arts programme, which has given her social connections outwith her previous network.
The Housing Support Team works actively with over 90 people, providing innovative and intensive support to those who are homeless or threatened with homelessness.
Transform Community Development took forward mainstreaming of Housing First in Dundee at the end of Social Bite’s involvement in the programme, using an innovative and far-sighted strategy to develop and expand the programme.
The charity works with Dundee Health and Social Care Partnership and Dundee City Council to develop services in alignment with the local Rapid Rehousing Transition Plan.
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.
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.”