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Sturgeon announces £50m fund to tackle ‘worrying’ increase in homelessness
Nicola Sturgeon has announced an expert group to address the “worrying” increase in homelessness and rough sleeping and £50m to fund its recommendations.
Setting out the Scottish Government’s programme for government, the first minister said there are “worrying signs” of an increase in homelessness and rough sleeping and the expert group will make “urgent” recommendations on how to tackle this.
She also announced a £50m fund, split over five years, to tackle homelessness and “transform” the use of temporary accommodation and a £20m fund for alcohol and drug abuse services to address the “underlying problems which so often drive homelessness”.
This comes off the back of a dramatic jump in children living in temporary accommodation over recent years, with a 31% increase since 2013.
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Ms Sturgeon said: “As Westminster austerity and welfare cuts take their toll, we are seeing worrying signs of an increase in homelessness and rough sleeping. We are not prepared to tolerate that… it is not acceptable for anyone to have to sleep rough on our streets. We must eradicate rough sleeping.
“However, in setting that national objective, we also must recognise that it requires more than just housing. Every individual has unique needs and challenges.”
Adam Lang, head of communications and policy at Shelter Scotland, said the working group is “extremely welcome”.
He added: “The challenges facing this new action group are significant. Last year, a household became homeless every 19 minutes in Scotland and tomorrow morning more than 6,000 children will wake up without a permanent home of their own.”
Jon Sparkes, chief executive of Crisis, said: “The use of temporary accommodation in Scotland is on the rise and at Crisis we have particular concerns about the number of individuals left to languish for months in unsuitable forms of temporary accommodation, without access to cooking facilities or the use of a washing machine, or no bathroom of their own.”
Ms Sturgeon said the Scottish Government had built social housing “at a faster rate than any other part of the UK” but will make “further progress” towards its target of delivering 50,000 affordable homes over the next parliament. The government recently admitted some of this target could include councils buying back existing stock.
A new planning bill will also go before the Scottish Parliament in 2017/18.
The Scottish Government previously announced it will introduce a Housing (Amendment) Bill to bring in the same package of deregulation the UK government introduced last year to return housing associations to the private sector after the Office for National Statistics reclassified them as public organisations.
In a blog post published today, housing minister Kevin Stewart said: “Reclassifying [registered social landlords] back to the private sector is crucially important, as it will ensure their borrowing continues to be treated as private borrowing, which can be used to augment £3bn of public investment provided by the Scottish Government to support the delivery of 50,000 new affordable homes in the next five years.”
David Bookbinder, director of Glasgow and West of Scotland Forum of Housing Associations, said it is important for "checks and balances" to be put in place to "guard against excessive disposal of social housing stock" once the legislation is enacted and housing associations no longer need to seek the regulator’s approval for disposals.
Inside Housing’s Cathy at 50 campaign calls for politicians to commit to ending rough sleeping and investigate the use of Housing First schemes to achieve this.
