'Calling it a housing emergency isn't helping anyone'

BBC News

15-05-2025

Laura and her family have been living in temporary flats since they became homeless four years ago.They are one of over 16,000 households in Scotland now classed as homeless, with over 10,000 children now living in temporary accommodation – both record high figures.The Scottish government declared a national housing emergency exactly a year ago but new data suggests the crisis is only getting worse."Calling it a housing emergency and not doing anything about it isn't helping anyone," she says.
Laura, who is married and has four children aged four, five, 13 and 17, says she is desperate for a "forever home" for her family but lives with the threat of eviction every day.The 37-year-old and her family presented as homeless in June 2021 after being evicted from a privately rented home. Laura has lived in South Queensferry her entire life, and says that they have been offered no permanent homes.They have been living in temporary homeless flats ever since, unable to secure a council house as Scotland continues to suffer a severe shortage in social housing.
Laura's temporary flat is an ex-council home, owned by a private landlord, and leased back to the City of Edinburgh council to provide homeless accommodation.Because such flats are owned by private landlords and not the council, the owners could decide at any time to withdraw their property from the leasing scheme – meaning tenants like Laura and her family would face eviction.Thousands of others in Edinburgh are in the same situation and Laura says she feels lost in the system."We don't have the support, we feel as though we've been pushed to the side essentially.""It's a losing battle because we're in temporary accommodation, but we could get evicted at a moment's notice," she says."It has a massive toll. We can't plan anything, we can't get settled, we can't make the place a home."Every day the children are asking me when we're going to get a home, and it's really really difficult because I don't have the answers to give them."Laura says she and her family have been offered other temporary homeless flats on the edge of Edinburgh, more then eight miles from the community they know and where the children go to school in South Queensferry."I completely understand there's people who'd have the opinion you should just take what you're given," she says."But at the same time, we've built a family here and we've got commitments."It's not refusing a home, it's refusing to lose the lives we've built."
The Scottish government declared the housing emergency in May 2024 after coming under sustained pressure from opposition parties and campaigners.Thirteen councils have declared housing emergencies of their own.The housing charity Shelter Scotland believe things have only deteriorated in the past 12 months.They have carried out new research which suggests more than four in ten adults in Scotland are now struggling with housing. Polling by Yougov for the charity suggests that the equivalent of 2.3 million Scots are now struggling with the security, condition, affordability or suitability of their home - an increase of 800,000 people since 2021."It's been a year since the Scottish Parliament declared a housing emergency and since then, homelessness has gone up and social housebuilding has gone down," says Shelter Scotland director Alison Watson."Last week the Scottish government announced a Programme for Government with no plan to end the housing emergency."Instead, we had a programme for homelessness, which says nothing about the 10,360 children trapped in temporary accommodation which experts say exposes them to violence, vermin and isolation. This simply cannot continue."Ms Watson says that rather than just declaring a housing emergency, ministers must announce a detailed action plan to tackle it.
'A big problem'
In a recent report, the Scottish Housing Regulator said systemic failure of homelessness systems were impacting three local authorities, with a further seven at risk of being impacted by systemic failure in the delivery of homelessness services.And internal Scottish government risk assessments, obtained by BBC Scotland News through freedom of information requests, reveal that the government is at high risk of failing to deliver its high-profile promise to build 110,000 affordable homes by 2032.The pledge, called the Affordable Housing Supply Programme, faced a budget cut of more than a fifth last year. That cut was reversed later in the year, but latest figures show the number of housing starts for all sectors are at the lowest since 2013 - and completions the lowest since 2018.There are estimates suggesting that 164,000 homes in Scotland already have planning permission but are not being built.Homes For Scotland, which represents the building industry, says it is becoming the hardest place to build houses in the UK."The housing emergency is an immediate and actionable problem which has been decades in the making," says chief executive Jane Wood."We've seen a consistent drop in the number of starts and completions and if that's dropping down, then we are obviously accumulating a big problem."She is calling for a more streamlined planning process in Scotland, including statutory timescales, better assessments of housing needs in different areas, and more accountability on delivery.
'Good track record'
Shirley-Anne Sommerville, the Scottish government's cabinet secretary for social justice, told BBC Scotland News that the government is making progress on tackling the housing emergency but is under no illusion that there is a challenge and more to be done."The government has already delivered 136,000 affordable homes; that's nearly 50% more per head of the population than England and 70% more than in Wales," she said."So we have a good track record, but we know there's more to do, and that's why the budget this year got £768 million that will deliver eight thousand more affordable homes."Sommerville said they are determined to meet the 110,000 affordable target by 2032 and they had increased funding to mitigate the risks which their internal assessments had identified.She also said they would need to work with developers who already have planning permission to get homes delivered.The City of Edinburgh Council has been contacted for comment.