HOMELESSNESS seems to be back on the agenda in a way it hasn’t been for a while, in Scotland.
After the passing of the Homelessness (Scotland) Act 2003, we were told Scotland had the best law in Europe, that there would soon be no need for anyone to sleep rough. A decade later by abolishing the priority need test, and requiring councils to house anyone who had become unintentionally homeless, Scottish ministers claimed they had effectively put an end to homelessness.
Yet four and a half years later, we have Shelter Scotland demanding a new homelessness strategy. A grassroots campaign has sprung up demanding more action following the death of 28-year-old Aberdeen man Matthew Bloomer on the freezing streets of Glasgow last Tuesday. “No More Homeless Deaths” activists scrawled in spray paint, in the boarded up doorway of the city’s former BHS store.
Campaigners are calling for such empty properties to be opened up to prevent further suffering. Meanwhile, prisons chief inspector David Strang has related how on a recent visit to Kilmarnock prison, inspectors met a man who had reoffended so as to return to jail, rather than continue sleeping in a tent.
So why do we seem to be back where we started? UK Government welfare policies are a considerable factor. Benefit sanctions, as well as the new universal credit, which rolls together housing payments and job seeker’s allowance.
Members of Shelter’s Time for Change group, who held a workshop at the housing charity’s conference last week, are offering to accompany other people applying as homless to help them navigate the system.
The group say that knowing your rights is key to securing accommodation and councils will not always follow the rules. “The service is based on members’ own experience of being turned away or not allowed to make a homeless application – despite it being their right,” the group says.
The next change from the Department for Work and Pensions will be to strip housing support from 18-21-year-olds, although the Scottish Government opposes this and plans to extend the Scottish Welfare Fund to mitigate the change. Still, it seems homessness may once again get worse before it gets any better.
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