A Scottish charity which supports the homeless and has enjoyed the support of celebrities and royalty has warned that landlords are "profiteering from human misery" as the nation struggles to cope with a housing emergency.

Social Bite, which counts George Clooney, Leonardo DiCaprio and the Duke and Duchess of Sussex among its supporters has condemned the state of temporary accommodation for the homeless referring to urine-stained mattresses, bed bugs, and out of date food and said some would be "unsuitable for any human being to find shelter in".

Its 38-year-old founder and executive director Josh Littlejohn said urgent changes to the "broken temporary accommodation system" warning there is "no incentive for private operators to support people out of homelessness or invest in any kind of quality standards".

"We need to start to turn the tanker and invest in high quality homelessness accommodation that will provide support on site, to help vulnerable people find their feet and break the cycle of homelessness," said Mr Littlejohn, who helped launch the first Social Bite café in Edinburgh in 2012.

It comes as a Herald investigation into the housing scandal has revealed that every day 50 Scots children are being hit by homelessness while the numbers languishing in halfway house temporary accommodation because they cannot be found settled homes has more than trebled in twenty years.

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It all comes six years after the Scottish Government launched an action plan to build affordable homes which was meant to curb homelessness, cut the use of temporary accommodation and rapidly rehouse people.

But so far it has not worked, with 4,700 households more stuck in housing limbo in 2023 than there were six years ago - a rise of 43% - with 15,625 in temporary accommodation last year - the highest for over 20 years. Over two decades, that number has trebled with just 5403 in the makeshift homes in 2003.

The number of children in the housing limbo has followed suit hitting new records. There were 9,860 children in such transitory homes towards the end of 2023, 3245 (49%) more than when ministers launched the action plan.

Josh Littlejohn and George Clooney (Image: YouTube)

The councils' spend on placing the homeless in temporary accommodation such as bed and breakfasts and hotels because there is a shortage of permanent homes shot up to over £720m of public money over the last five years because of the housing shortage.

According to estimates based on council returns the cost to the public purse has nearly doubled since before the pandemic.

It was running at over £190m in 2023, a rise of nearly £30m (18%) from the previous year. In 2019 the cost was at just over £100m.

Scotland's biggest city, Glasgow tops the costs table with a £54.526m spend in 2023, nearly twice as much as the pre-Covid year of 2019 when costs were at £27m.

It comes as the Scottish Government's affordable homes budget has taken a cumulative hit of over £280m over the past three years without taking inflation into account - based against the 2021/22 allocation of £779.776m - despite a pledge by outgoing First Minister Humza Yousaf of a £80m uplift for affordable housing over the next two years.

Housing campaigners have been staggered by a £196.08m (26%) cut to the budget in the 2024/25 alone.

Social Bite, whose focus is on trying to end homelessness has evolved to provide homes, jobs, food, and support said that while bed and breakfasts eat up much of the larger local authorities’ homelessness budgets, they are often "run-down and demoralising places to live, where people’s mental health issues can spiral downwards".

The charity, credited with creating and launching Scotland’s Housing First programme involving securing 830 mainstream flats across five cities to provide permanent homes to Scotland’s rough sleepers, said that Scotland "needs to urgently fix this broken system".

Mr Littlejohn, who was made an MBE in 2017 for services to social enterprise and entrepreneurship, said that the Scottish Government's declaration of a housing emergency is not enough of itself to change lives warning: "Without concrete, bold measures the situation will continue to deteriorate, leaving countless people in unsuitable living conditions".

He said: "The provision of temporary accommodation should not be left to the profiteers and the charity sector must provide solutions that local authorities can commission.

"The legislation states that no homeless person should have to reside in a B&B for more than seven days, but the truth is that many vulnerable people can become trapped in temporary accommodation for over two years. The result is that they become further removed from society and more entrenched in a broken homelessness system over which they have no control. All the while, private landlords who operate much of this accommodation make shockingly substantial profits from a dire situation."

(Image: Social Bite)

Mr Littlejohn who started Social Bite with the simple aim of donating profits to charity before becoming a movement for ending homelessness added: "During the last 12 years, since founding Social Bite, I have seen time and time again that people living in these forms of temporary accommodation are affected by isolation, living in a kind of limbo – cut adrift from society and stigmatised.

"For example, I’ve been told by some of the people that Social Bite supports that many of these privately-owned homelessness B&Bs have a rule that residents aren’t even allowed to speak to one other, which is enforced by security guards.

"I assume this rule is designed to minimise hassle for the owners by reducing conflict between residents, but imagine how isolating it is to be told you’re not allowed to speak to anyone. That sounds more like a prison to me than accommodation for people at a vulnerable moment of their lives.

"Why does this continue? Because there’s no incentive for private operators to support people out of homelessness or invest in any kind of quality standards. Local authorities pay B&B operators a generous nightly rate often north of £50 per person and they are ‘fully booked’ all year round. The sad fact is that homelessness has become a big money-making industry and in my opinion, that’s profiteering from human misery."

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In November, a prototype for a new house intended to be constructed at purpose-built villages for homeless people was launched as part of the charity’s annual appeal.

(Image: Image supplied)

Each house will have a bedroom, kitchen, lounge area and storage, and will form part of a development of 15 homes, with communal dining space and counselling rooms in Dundee, with another such village soon to be announced in South Lanarkshire.

As part of the charity’s campaign, the public is being encouraged to give the “gift of home” where they can make a donation to the new villages or gifts, meals and other essential items to homeless and vulnerable people at Christmas.

Housing minister Paul McLennan said: “I have been meeting with Housing Convenors across the country since last summer to discuss the housing pressures each area is facing. 

“When temporary accommodation is used, we are determined to ensure that it is indeed temporary and of good quality.  The majority of households are offered temporary accommodation in the social rented sector. 

"Alongside measures to prevent homelessness, Increasing housing stock is key to reducing the use of temporary accommodation. Since 2007, we have delivered more than 131,000 affordable homes, with more than 93,000 of those being for social rent and we will invest nearly £600 million in affordable housing in 2024-25.

“Where the Scottish Housing Regulator (SHR) identifies non-compliance with the Unsuitable Accommodation Order in a local authority, an engagement plan will be published setting out what the social landlord needs to do and what the SHR will do. The SHR expects the local authority to become compliant on its own given the responsibility to do so lies with the local authority.”

The Convention of Scottish Local Authorities was approached for comment.