Tag: homelessness

Now recruiting: Impact Lead

Posted on

Are you looking for a rewarding role with real influence? This is a pivotal post working at the forefront of the collective effort to end homelessness in Scotland.
 
We are looking for someone with empathy, creativity, persistence, strong organisational skills – and a talent for enabling others to achieve their goals.
 
At the heart of our work is the platforms we provide for people with personal experience of homelessness – Homeless Network Scotland’s Associates. Your primary responsibility will be to enable and support Associates by providing coaching, building meaningful engagement and creating dynamic opportunities for them to shape policy, transform practices and challenge perceptions surrounding homelessness.
  
Your work will directly contribute to transforming how homelessness is understood and addressed, ensuring that those with lived experience are not just heard but are active leaders in creating solutions. This role is an opportunity to make a lasting difference by bridging personal insights with broader societal impact.

Find more information on the post and our work:

Recruitment pack (PDF)
Core competencies (PDF)
 
⏩ Please return the Application Pack (Word) before 5pm, 27 October 2025.

Scottish Government data exposes life-limiting toll of the Housing Emergency

Posted on

Homelessness statistics released yesterday show that the life-limiting impact of the housing emergency on people in Scotland is deepening – and risks becoming the norm with a continued absence of the action needed to solve the problem.

Households in temporary accommodation hit a record 17,240 with a 6% rise in 12 months. More than 10,000 children, enough kids to fill a town, spend long periods of their young lives stuck in temporary accommodation.

The official Scottish Government statistics for the year to March 2025 showed the average number of days people spend in this limbo is 238 days – 386 if you’re a couple with a child.

34,067 households were assessed by councils as homeless, with 31,695 open homelessness cases – the highest on record. The increase in repeat homelessness also signals a deepening cycle of instability, with people unable to secure lasting solutions amid stretched services and a shortage of social and affordable homes.

Meanwhile, the number of people reporting they slept rough the night before applying for assistance rose 28% to 2,465. Glasgow now accounts for 43% of all rough sleeping – followed by Edinburgh (8%), Fife (7%), Aberdeen City (4%), Dundee and Highland (both 3%). We know from research and lived experience evidence how dangerous that desperate course of action is.

And people were not able to exercise their right to temporary accommodation in 16,485 instances – up 106% in one year. This all combines to paint a picture of people being failed at crisis points despite the best efforts of statutory services operating under severe pressure, and shows the reality of a broken system.

More homes and more support

Earlier this month the Cabinet Secretary for Housing Màiri McAllan unveiled measures to heal that system with a housing emergency action plan. While her proposals prioritise creating more social homes and boosting support for people worst affected by the emergency, they don’t go far enough.

Above all, we need more homes. The £4.9bn spend on affordable homes announced by the Cabinet Secretary is well short of the estimated £8.2bn cost of creating the required 15,693 homes each year from 2026-2031, set out in a report by Shelter Scotland, the Scottish Federation of Housing Associations and the Chartered Institute of Housing Scotland.

If we are to bring these numbers down, we also need to make sure everyone has access to the support they need, delivered by a joined-up system with people at the heart.

More resource for Housing First was welcome. But with an estimated 10% of demand being met today, we need this scaled up dramatically to support people whose homelessness is made worse by severe and multiple disadvantage. This will prevent more people having to sleep rough and ultimately save money for other services including the NHS.

And looking forward, it is crucial that the new homelessness prevention measures in the Housing Bill are properly resourced and delivered, to divert more people from crisis and ease pressure on services.

Homelessness in Scotland: 2024-25 full statistics

Cabinet Secretary Housing Emergency statement: What it means for homelessness

Posted on

We welcome measures announced today by the Cabinet Secretary for Housing to tackle the impact of the housing emergency on people across Scotland. 

It is right to focus first on addressing the impact of this solvable emergency on children’s wellbeing and health, on the most disadvantaged and excluded groups in society, and on people who face real peril for want of access to safe accommodation.

And it is right to provide more investment for homes and more acquisitions. Without the right level of spending on these national priorities, homelessness and rough sleeping will only get worse, at great cost to people, communities, and the public finances.

While £4.9billion for affordable housing over the next 4 years is significant – along with a commitment to multi-year funding projections – it falls well short of the £1.64billion annual investment that is needed to bring homes in reach for everyone, according to authoritative research released today by Shelter Scotland, the Chartered Institute of Housing Scotland and the Scottish Federation of Housing Associations.

Rapid Rehousing and Housing First

We know Rapid Rehousing, including Housing First with wraparound support, is the right plan to reduce homelessness. Extending Rapid Rehousing Transition funding of £8million into 2026/27 will support councils to implement their Rapid Rehousing plans and provide the right housing options for everyone in their community.

A £1million uplift in Housing First funding this year can keep more people in tenancies, breaking the cycle of repeat homelessness and saving money for services people rely on when they become homeless, including the NHS, mental health, and justice.

Providing £3million for social landlords to acquire properties to deliver Housing First in targeted locations is a further positive step in scaling up Housing First, which currently meets just 9% of projected demand – a figure that has not changed from last year.

The next step must be to introduce longer-term funding arrangements and increase funding so Housing First can help more people. Local authorities and support providers are crying out for the certainty that multi-year settlements bring, for the benefit of tenants and frontline workers as well as their own vital operations.

Temporary accommodation

People who experience homelessness must have access to the same range of housing options as other members of the public. For some people, the private rented sector offers the right choice, in the right place at the right time. For that reason, investing up to £2million through the Scottish Government’s Discretionary Housing Payments scheme to support households in temporary accommodation to find settled homes in the private rented sector is also to be welcomed.

Increasing supply of good quality temporary accommodation through private sector leasing will, we hope, divert more people away from unsuitable and unsafe conditions – while also squeezing out providers who make millions by providing squalid accommodation. 

The Scottish Government can go further by creating a challenge fund to supply more good quality temporary accommodation delivered by the third sector and social landlords. Increasing supply of good quality temporary accommodation will be crucial, given the measures announced today to proactively ‘flip’ good quality temporary accommodation occupied by families with children into settled homes wherever possible. A positive measure mustn’t have a negative knock-on effect.

No rollback on rights

The Cabinet Secretary has today shown boldness and a welcome sense of urgency with her action plan. We appreciate her strong commitment to preserving existing housing rights, voiced in the chamber, and her demand that the Home Office properly fund and organise its asylum processes.

It is unrealistic to demand that the Cabinet Secretary solve the housing emergency in the remaining nine months of this parliament. But it is crucial that this momentum continues after the election in May. The next Scottish Government must build on this action, not least by stretching to meet the true cost of building the social and affordable homes we need.

Alongside that, the next government must also ensure the prevention measures in the Housing Bill are properly implemented – because the best way to tackle homelessness is by preventing it happening as early as possible.

Read the Cabinet Secretary’s full statement

August Network Briefing

Posted on

This month’s Network Briefing includes new research on subjects including refuge accommodation and ethnicity and homelessness. You’ll also find events and launches from Shelter Scotland and Citizens Advice Scotland, plus news, training opportunities and more.

Click below to access the new briefing and subscribe to get it delivered straight to your inbox every month.

August briefing

Scottish Government £1m Upstream Homelessness Prevention Fund projects announced

Posted on

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.