Glasgow spends £305m on temporary homes for homeless as B&B costs soar

The Herald can reveal that the Glasgow City Health and Social Care Partnership - the amalgamation of Glasgow City Council and NHS Greater Glasgow and Clyde which delivers community health and social care services - has been spending an average of £6.633 million a month on temporary accommodation provision over a 19 month period to November, last year - nearly 60% (£2.5m) more per month than before the pandemic in 2019/20.

And the amount spent each month on placing the homeless in bed and breakfasts, because no other accommodation can be found, has quadrupled in the past five years.

Housing campaigners, who have said the costs are a "scandal" say the issues around people being housed in poor temporary accommodation exists because there are not enough affordable homes being built across the country.

READ MORE: 'Campaign of resistance' as 2500 homeless children stuck in temporary Glasgow housing.

That is one of the key issues that led to the Scottish Government finally declaring a symbolic national housing emergency in the middle of last month.

According to HSCP analysis, seen by The Herald, the cost of placing the homeless in temporary accommodation hit £304.688m between April 2019 and November 2023, with £72.392m in 2022/23 alone.

The five-and-a-half year temporary accommodation bill is equivalent to the real terms cut to the Scottish Government's affordable homes budget over the past two years - based against the 2022/23 allocation of £831.445m.

Housing campaigners have been staggered by a £196.08m (26%) cut to the budget in the past year alone, without taking into account inflation, with the spending plans for 2024/25 set at £555.862m before an extra £80m uplift over two years was promised by then First Minister Humza Yousaf.

The Scottish Tenants' Organisation which has been examining the state of homes for the homeless said the amount of money being spent was "incredible" and that urgent action is needed to ensure that money is directed towards settled homes rather than temporary accommodation.

"The astronomical sums of money spent by Glasgow City Council on often squalid and unsuitable temporary accommodation should have been better spent on building new social rented homes and retrofitting and renovating thousands of empty homes in Glasgow therefore avoiding the current housing and homeless emergency we find ourselves in.

"If there had been proactive action to transition away from temporary to settled accommodation we would not be in this position. That has not been happening and is failing and the bottom line is this money could have been used for settled, affordable social housing so they were not on the streets."

The amount spent on putting the homeless in privately owned bed and breakfasts, guest houses and hotels has amounted to £52.9m in the past five-and-half years.

It has gone from an average of £287,289 a month before the pandemic to £1.45m a month typically over the 19 months.

The housing emergency declaration was made by social justice secretary Shirley-Anne Somerville last month during a Labour-led debate at Holyrood and ministers have cited UK government austerity, inflation labour shortages linked to Brexit and a freeze to local housing allowance rates for the the situation.

But UK ministers said that the Scottish government receives about 25% more funding from Whitehall than other parts of the UK.

Housing campaigners have strongly criticised a £196.08m (26%) cut to the Scottish Government's affordable homes budget in the past year alone, without taking into account inflation, with the spending plans for 2024/25 set at £555.862m before the extra money promised by the First Minister.

If the budget had kept up with inflation in 2024/25, the spending plans would have been at £985.25m.

Without taking into account inflation, the shortfall against 2022/23 is at £315.08m.

When inflation has been taken into account, instead of getting £2.723bn over the three years - the affordable homes budget is at £2.179bn.

The affordable homes plan set out by Nicola Sturgeon in a Programme for Government in 2021 aimed to "build on our investment in housing".

And Mr Yousaf in announcing the new money added: “Housing is essential in our efforts to tackle child poverty and reduce inequality across Scotland, and it supports jobs and growth in the economy."

While declaring the housing emergency, First Minister John Swinney warned: “We have to recognise that the government does not have a limitless amount of money and we can’t invest everything if our capital budget is being reduced by the UK government.”

The emergency declaration came from the Scottish Government while the number of affordable homes being approved for build has slumped.

As of December, Scotland has been averaging 633 affordable housing starts a month since setting the target. To meet a 110,000 homes target they have to deliver at an average of 894 homes a month.

This is set against the number of open homelessness applications in Scotland soaring by 30% since the pandemic began - from 22,754 in March 2020, to 29,652 in 2022/23. The homeless household numbers being forced into temporary accommodation - like hotels and bed and breakfasts - rather than settled homes has shot up from 11,807 to 15,039.

Four local authorities have declared a symbolic housing emergency - Glasgow, Edinburgh, Argyll and Bute and Fife - all citing shortages of affordable housing.

Sean Clerkin, campaign co-ordinator of the STO said: "Private companies and private individuals who received tens of millions of pounds of taxpayers money should no longer be allowed to profit from such human misery.

"A transition plan should be established to finish with temporary accommodation and instead the money be used to start a housing revolution in Glasgow to build thousands of new homes and renovate the many long term empty homes so that every homeless person is given a secure, dry and warm home to eradicate homelessness once and for all.

"This scandal must never happen again."

It comes as growing numbers of local authorities have been failing to meet its legal duties by failing to ensure there was even enough suitable temporary accommodation.

Councils have a statutory obligation to offer temporary accommodation when they assess a person or household as unintentionally homeless.

Scotland's housing regulator told the council it failed in its legal duties when during 2019/20, the council admitted it failed to offer temporary accommodation on 3,786 instances when households required it - an increase of 445 on the previous year.

This meant the council "failed" to comply with its "statutory duty" to offer temporary accommodation in nearly 1 in 3 occasions when people required it.

The regulator said single people were "disproportionately affected" and accounted for 66% of homeless applications and for 83% of those not offered temporary accommodation.

The inquiry found that in some cases the people not accommodated were vulnerable and had approached the council for accommodation on multiple occasions.

In a review of a sample of of 2178 household presentations not offered accommodation they found that the council did not offer homes to 202 households with children. An inquiry was launched in 2019 after Shelter Scotland launched legal action against Glasgow City Council over its practice of “gatekeeping” – where people who present as homeless are refused their legal rights.

A Glasgow City Council spokesman said: "Glasgow City Council declared a housing emergency back in November 2023, shortly after Edinburgh City Council earlier that month. Argyll and Bute Council have followed suit.

"Glasgow’s declaration was partly in response to the Home Office accelerating decisions on asylum seekers applications. Putting pressure on our already scarce housing resources. This led to a doubling in the number of asylum seekers, alone, presenting to the local authority as homeless between August 2023 and March this year. A total of 1225 people. That statistic does not include other homeless demographics."