Homelessness cannot be allowed to go on like this

At this time of year thoughts turn to family and home. Christmas is a time to reflect on the year past and also to consider the year ahead and think about whether life has got better. The last few years I have reflected on the number of homeless in Scotland and said that we must act to prevent another Christmas occurring with so many people on our streets, in temporary housing, and provide children with a permanent home.

Tragically, the situation has worsened over the last year and more people will be spending this Christmas without a permanent roof over their heads.

My firm works closely with councils to try to find accommodation for those who find themselves homeless, but demand is far outstripping supply, and everyone involved feels that we are losing the battle to find people homes.

The latest Scottish statistics covering 2023-234 showed that 40,685 applications for homelessness assistance were received, which was an increase of 1,377 on the previous year and is the highest figure since 2011-12. There were 33,619 households assessed as homeless or threatened with homelessness, which is an increase of 1,088 on the previous year and again is the highest figure since 2011-12.

There were 16,330 households in temporary accommodation, which is 1,291 higher than last year and is the highest ever figure in the time series. The number of children in temporary accommodation has increased by 515 to 10,110.

While the increase in spending on housing announced in the Scottish Budget was welcome this was a drop in the ocean. Having tens of thousands of adults and children assessed as homeless or threatened with homelessness cannot be right as we near the end of the first quarter of the 21st century.

This cannot go on and the solution is to seek as broad a consensus as possible on how to resolve these issues. Given the enormous number of people now on the social housing waiting list in Scotland we need to develop answers which will work for decades to come rather than a matter of months or years.

We need to involve all aspects of the housing sector in providing a solution. There needs to be engagement and encouragement for more social housing, more private rented sector housing, and more housebuilding in general. Only by uniting the various parts of the entire housing sector will we come close to resolving this terrible problem of homelessness.

Nobody wants to see anyone living on the streets at Christmas or any other time of the year. Nobody wants people placed in temporary accommodation hundreds of miles from their families and friends with young children living in cramped hotel rooms. A solution to these issues requires long- term planning, coordination, communication, and a desire to produce solutions rather than arguments about the virtues of one form of housing over another.

We need sufficient housing of good quality in places where people want to live and which are appropriate to the needs of the individual, couples and families who are placed in these properties. We need policies which look beyond the short term political parliamentary timeframe and to plan for enough homes to be provided over the next two decades so that Scots have a home to be proud of and somewhere to happily celebrate Christmas in the future.