Meeting of the Parliament 25 January 2023
It is undeniable that we face a housing emergency. There can be no dispute that the situation has spiralled out of control under the SNP-Green Government. Since Nicola Sturgeon came to power, the number of households living in temporary accommodation has increased from just over 10,000 to almost 14,000.
In the past year, the number of both homeless households and homeless applications in Scotland have increased by 3 per cent, and applications are taking an average of 19 days to be assessed. However, the Government is cutting local government funding.
After they are eventually processed, many homeless families in my Lothian region are sent 150 miles away to emergency accommodation in Inverness. There are almost 100,000 children on Scotland’s social housing waiting lists. That is 21st century SNP Scotland. That number is simply unacceptable.
Currently, more than 24,000 people with disabilities are on social housing waiting lists. The longest that a person with a disability has been on a waiting list is 60 years—yes, 60 years. A freedom of information response from the City of Edinburgh Council read:
“The longest waiting time a self-assessed disabled applicant has had on the common housing register for social housing is from 1 Mar 1963.”
We can call that an emergency—or perhaps even worse—and an embarrassment to the Government. The Government should be ashamed. It should be ashamed that each of those numbers represents an individual or a household that has been let down. It should be ashamed that they represent a staggering number of children who do not enjoy the safety and security of a stable and warm home, and it should be ashamed that it is seemingly doing nothing to fix that. Warm words do not build houses.