Edinburgh homeless crisis critical: time up for 'unlawful' B&Bs

Of the city’s record 5,000 homeless households, around 650 were staying in unlicenced HMOs – which it is a criminal offence to operate - when officials presented a report in September warning the authority was in breach of its own licensing rules, and had to stop paying for unlawful accommodation.

This number has since been reduced as work to get empty homes back into use and find other housing has accelerated. However this has come at the cost of council house allocations and non-urgent repairs for tenants, which have both been paused to divert resources to deal with the immediate accommodation crisis.

With just days to go until the council must cut ties with any unlicenced HMOs - predominantly B&Bs - and with hundreds still housed in them, eleventh-hour applications have been submitted by operators of 12 such properties and will be determined at an emergency licensing meeting at the City Chambers on Friday, November 29.

Councillors will find themselves under pressure to grant licences, as homelessness charities warn a sudden cessation would be almost certain to lead to an increase in rough sleeping.

However the community council for Leith Links, where three of the HMOs due to be determined this week and several others already licenced are located, has urged the licensing sub-committee to reject landlords’ last minute efforts to keep the public funds flowing in their direction. It submitted objections highlighting what it called “woefully inadequate” facilities for occupants which fall “well short” of physical standards set out in HMO guidance.

Read more: 

• Damning report exposes human rights crisis in Highlands and Islands
• Deaths of homeless amid housing emergency 'source of shame'
• Hundreds of deaths recorded among homeless in Scotland last year
• 1,000 new homes available in bid to tackle Scotland's homeless crisis
• Scotland spends £720m in putting homeless in housing limbo

One application to house 60 people in 32 rooms related to a property which the group said it understood only had one kitchen for occupants, while Scottish Government guidance expects one kitchen for every five people in a shared property where residents are not from the same household.

Leith Links community councillor Sally Millar told The Herald: “I would call somewhere that doesn’t have adequate food preparation and food storage space substandard.

“The council likes to make it seem as though this is very short-term accommodation; we know the average time people could be spending in this accommodation is around two years. It could be more.

“We’re objecting on the grounds that we consider the applicant is not a fit and proper person to run an HMO and the reason we’re claiming that is because they’ve already been committing a crime by running them illegally.

“HMOs were never supposed to be for 40 or 50 or 60 people, they’re supposed to be three, four or five people.

“It’s a real mess.”

Usually neighbours of properties which have applied for HMO are invited to make representations and given 28 days to do so. With most applications going before councillors on Friday only submitted this month they have been fast-tracked and this process has been expedited by officers.

Instead of displaying notices outside properties council officials have hand-delivered letters to neighbours of the unlicenced HMOs. Seen by The Herald, these said following the normal procedure would “jeopardise” the safety or welfare of residents within the properties. Recipients were invited to attend the sub-committee to give their views.

The community council is concerned the operators are getting “special treatment” as according to the council’s website applications typically take 10 months to consider and “not 10 days”.

It said: “Cutting corners on compliance is not achieving compliance.”

Edinburgh Council said where it was considered standard notice period requirements would put people at risk an “an alternative process has been adopted”.

It insisted all the applications would be “determined in accordance with the legislation and will be determined on their individual merits” .

Although the reports on the agenda for the special meeting are not yet public a council spokesperson indicated they would be made available to read. They said the applications would be heard in public “unless it’s determined that exempt information needs to be considered”.

Ewan Aitken, chair of Shape, a collective of 20 charities involved in tackling homelessness, argued continuing to use unlicenced HMOs as temporary accommodation was the least worst option while a less disruptive solution to ending reliance on unsuitable B&Bs was agreed.

He said moving homeless people out at short notice this weekend and into properties in other parts of the city, or even in neighbouring local authorities put them at risk of losing vital support and becoming “re-traumatised”.

Mr Aitken, a former leader of Edinburgh Council and now chief executive of homeless charity Cyrenians, told The Herald: “We’re still worried there’s going to be a significant number who will have nowhere to go as well as those who it’ll be really difficult to provide the support.

“There’s some very worried people, they’re already vulnerable and not knowing where they’ll be, what the community will be like, what they need, how they’ll get access to the support they’ll require. There are many very scared people.

“If we don’t find a solution there will be an increase in rough sleeping as a consequence.”

In a meeting with journalists to discuss the situation last week, Edinburgh Council’s housing and homelessness director Derek McGowan said of the 650 households, 174 had been matched with void homes recently brought back into use in response to the crisis, of a total 250 made available.

Councillor Jane Meagher, housing, homelessness and fair work convener, said some of these would be of a “minimum standard” with cosmetic work outstanding but essential checks for fire, gas and electrical safety being fully carried out.

Furthermore Mr McGowan said some council and registered social landlord properties would be used to house those leaving unlicenced HMOs and a further 70 were on standby in other council areas, but he was “confident” these wouldn’t be needed.

He said if emergency HMO licences are granted on Friday “that will lessen the number of people that require accommodation considerably”.

He added other temporary accommodation options were available to the council but couldn’t go into details which were “commercially sensitive at the moment”.

He said: “We have been doing our best to stop using these properties for the last two years, the homeless numbers have gone against us.

He said those who had recently applied for a licence only when the council said it would stop paying for rooms “are the same who have repeatedly refused to apply for two years.

“It’s disappointing it’s taken something like this to get them to do that.”

Cllr Meagher said: “We had intended as a committee to cease our dependence on unlicenced HMOs within 12 months, which seemed to be a reasonable period of time over which we could realistically achieve that without serious pain.”

However she said the monitoring officer’s stark report in September meant this “had to stop” sooner than planned.

“We’ve always known that it breaks the law,” she admitted, adding the council had been left with no other options with “new homeless presentations every day, every week and every month”.