Scotland faces an “emergency” amid a “critical lack of capacity” of social housing, a report has warned.
Sneddon said: “The report sets out the unsustainable pressure on local authority housing, the challenges and barriers that are limiting the supply of new homes and social rent tenancies, and recommends action needed to implement change at pace and scale. The Housing in Scotland report showed that nine of the total 32 councils were unable to meet their statutory obligations to provide suitable temporary accommodation. There were 28,944 open homelessness applications open at the end of September.
The report calls for a temporary pause on new duties that extend the definition of homelessness and a further break in changes which allow referrals for housing to where applicants have no local connection. “We have a housing emergency, what we need now is an emergency response that acknowledges the urgency required and that makes a genuine difference to our collective ability to respond to the unprecedented challenges.”