Meeting of the Parliament (Hybrid) 02 February 2022
The Parliament should be proud of the progressive housing rights that it has introduced for people who experience, or are at risk of experiencing, homelessness. That has been the result of a concerted effort across the chamber. The right to access to permanent accommodation and other rights that the Parliament has already enshrined in Scots law are some of the strongest in the world.
“The Homelessness Monitor: Scotland 2021”, which was commissioned by Crisis, found that rates of the most severe forms of homelessness are substantially lower in Scotland than they are in England and Wales. However, to reach our ambition of ensuring that everyone has a safe and warm place to call home, we want to end rough sleeping and to transform temporary accommodation, so there is more to be done.
Yesterday, we published our latest homelessness statistics. Although in 24 local authority areas use of temporary accommodation has gone down since September 2020, the statistics show that, overall, far too many households are in temporary accommodation. That is not good enough. We must learn from the areas that are making progress and share their good practice. We will continue to work with our partners to use all the powers that we have and to take the action that is needed to reduce the time that people spend in temporary accommodation, to improve the quality of accommodation that is available and to tackle rough sleeping. We must also do more to prevent people from entering the homelessness system in the first place.