Glasgow faces rough sleeping rise after funding reduced, charity warns

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Sorry lazy copy and paste of headline: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-66115601

Scotland's largest city could see a rise in rough sleeping as funding is reduced for homeless bed and breakfast lodgings, a charity has warned.

Shelter said recent progress in Glasgow was at risk of being reversed as the health and social care partnership looks to make £4.9m in savings.

This includes "decommissioning" a hotel used to house homeless people.

Glasgow City Council said homelessness services face "unprecedented pressures".

It comes as figures released this week revealed 51 people have died in the city's homeless hotels since the pandemic.

...

A report delivered last week to the city's integration joint board - which administers homelessness services - said a £16m overspend is expected unless "decisive action" is taken.

It added that while the number of rough sleepers in the city was routinely reported as being in "single figures", Scottish government funding to provide temporary hotel accommodation ended in March this year.

Placements in hotels or B&B accommodation account for around 750 applications.

Meanwhile, the city faces a shortfall of 1,600 properties to provide temporary accommodation.

Plans are now underway to reduce the number of people being sent to hotels, including the Charles Rennie Mackintosh in the city's Union Street.

However, the report noted: "Despite all attempts to mitigate risk as detailed there remains a risk that Glasgow Homelessness Services will breach statutory duties to provide emergency accommodation.

"There is also an increased likelihood of rough sleeping and hardship for service users, reputational damage and potential judicial sanctions and additional costs.

"Whilst acknowledging the risk involved it is worth noting that these proposals are considered to be the least impactful when compared with the status quo, financial pressures and the increasing trajectory of demand."

I haven't quoted the full article which includes commentary from shelter that GCC do need to be helped to provide more social housing so they are less reliant on b and bs etc.

But anyway, to me this is quite a dry and sanitised article about what is a really scary situation. The hotels that do exist often are dangerous and not fit for purpose (hence the deaths). The council will not be meeting its legal obligations to provide temporary accommodation to homeless people to an even greater extent that it is doing already and I really do think there is an increased risk that people will die as a result.

Glasgow is under fairly unique pressure as it has none of its own housing stock, accommodates a lot of refugees and has a lot of people moving there from other parts of the country. But honestly this situation is really unnerving. A lot of the problems with temporary accommodation are due to a bottleneck in the provision of permanent accommodation (which is nearly always social housing, unlike in England), and yet the budget to build social housing is being cut: https://www.scottishhousingnews.com/art ... -new-homes Ugh.

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I missed this the other day:

Glasgow presses for Home Office help in looming refugee homelessness crisis

The Home Office is under intensifying pressure to help house more than 1,400 refugees who face homelessness in Glasgow owing to its rush to clear a significant backlog in asylum claims.

Lawyers acting for refugees in Glasgow have warned that the city council and the Scottish and UK governments face legal action and compensation claims if they fail to provide enough housing for people being granted the legal right to live in the UK.

The Scottish Refugee Council said that without sufficient housing there would be “escalating street homelessness” this winter, putting people at risk of exploitation and potential loss of life. “The perversity of all this is that for those granted refugee status, this should be a time of relief, hope and joy; not of torment and homelessness,” said Graham O’Neill, the SRC’s policy officer.

Glasgow city council expects that more than 1,400 refugees will be suddenly made homeless in the city later this year because of a Home Office decision to speed up the asylum backlog, emptying more than 50 hotels of applicants.

The article continues but obvs it's not paywalled. The three cases mentioned in the article are just the tip of the iceberg. Whether they come from hotels or proper flats or houses, or have moved up to Glasgow after being in asylum accommodation elsewhere.

It's a funny one isn't it. Glasgow CC agreed to accept dispersed asylum seekers, who at that point would be accommodated via the Home Office (by private contractors). When the asylum seekers are granted asylum, a lot of them are likely to want to stay in Glasgow. They get kicked out of the Home Office accommodation, and end up homeless, and the council then has to accommodate them. It's pretty forseeable. So Glasgow making noises about the Home Office finally (potentially) clearing its ridiculous backlog of asylum cases is a bit unpalatable - should the Home Office not do that and just carry on being abominably slow? To add to that, housing is a devolved matter, so why does GCC think the responsibility to ensure they're adequately funded lies with the Home Office and not the Scottish government? That's partly a rhetorical question but not entirely. It's a hot mess. To be honest, I'm totally embarrassed about it. Yes, sorry you have fled your war-torn country, possibly leaving your family behind until you can get some security, only to be (probably) treated like sh.t by the Home Office, then once you finally get refugee status you're - literally - chucked out onto the street. There is hope, you might be able to get some accommodation eventually (that you're legally entitled to), probably more quickly if you get a lawyer involved, but it will probably be a room in a run down hotel, not much chance of getting a flat because you don't have a family (...oh wait).

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Edinburgh Council declares a housing emergency

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Edinburgh Council declares a housing emergency

Holy f.ck

Close to 5,000 households including many children will need to live in temporary accommodation this Christmas, because of this housing shortage.

How has it only taken them until now to declare and emergency?

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Edinburgh Council declares a housing emergency

Holy f.ck

Close to 5,000 households including many children will need to live in temporary accommodation this Christmas, because of this housing shortage.

How has it only taken them until now to declare and emergency?

If you go to item 8.5 on here there is a recent report 'homelessness statutory returns' which has a few statistics on homeless applications in Edinburgh and Scotland: https://democracy.edinburgh.gov.uk/ieLi ... 7025&Ver=4

Sorry, I'm not as diligent as you at picking stuff out and quoting it, I might do tomorrow but hopefully that link is helpful in the meantime...it doesn't answer your question, just adds a bit of context.

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Sorry, I'm not as diligent as you at picking stuff out and quoting it, I might do tomorrow but hopefully that link is helpful in the meantime...it doesn't answer your question, just adds a bit of context.

What you mean to say is that you actually do something important for a living and don't waste time procrastinating like I do

[Fishnut]

If you go to item 8.5 on here there is a recent report 'homelessness statutory returns' which has a few statistics on homeless applications in Edinburgh and Scotland: https://democracy.edinburgh.gov.uk/ieLi ... 7025&Ver=4

It looks like the level of homelessness in Edinburgh has been in the thousands for the last few years. The data in the report goes back to 2018-19 and even then there were 3,393 applications for homelessness assistance. Numbers decreased slightly during the pandemic (dropping to 2,413 in 2020-21) but have been increasing to pre-pandemic levels.

And Glasgow is even worse. They didn't see any pandemic decrease - in fact it increased to a peak of 5,763 applications in 2021-22. Things have got slightly better in the most recent year but are still 5,339.

It shows my ignorance to not realise how bad things are and for how long. I mean, I knew that homelessness had been increasing thanks to the decade+ of Tory austerity but in my naivety I thought that an emergency meant there had been a sudden and unexpected increase, not a steady one that's been terrible for years that people have seemingly finally decided to do something about.

[discovolante]

Sorry, I'm not as diligent as you at picking stuff out and quoting it, I might do tomorrow but hopefully that link is helpful in the meantime...it doesn't answer your question, just adds a bit of context.

What you mean to say is that you actually do something important for a living and don't waste time procrastinating like I do

Nope, that's certainly not what I meant. It's Saturday anyway! I'm just lazy

[discovolante]

If you go to item 8.5 on here there is a recent report 'homelessness statutory returns' which has a few statistics on homeless applications in Edinburgh and Scotland: https://democracy.edinburgh.gov.uk/ieLi ... 7025&Ver=4

It looks like the level of homelessness in Edinburgh has been in the thousands for the last few years. The data in the report goes back to 2018-19 and even then there were 3,393 applications for homelessness assistance. Numbers decreased slightly during the pandemic (dropping to 2,413 in 2020-21) but have been increasing to pre-pandemic levels.

And Glasgow is even worse. They didn't see any pandemic decrease - in fact it increased to a peak of 5,763 applications in 2021-22. Things have got slightly better in the most recent year but are still 5,339.

It shows my ignorance to not realise how bad things are and for how long. I mean, I knew that homelessness had been increasing thanks to the decade+ of Tory austerity but in my naivety I thought that an emergency meant there had been a sudden and unexpected increase, not a steady one that's been terrible for years that people have seemingly finally decided to do something about.

To be honest, the language of 'emergency', as far as I can tell, is basically lifted from Shelter's campaigning, which appears to have been effective here at least. A lot of temporary accommodation is tourist hotel accommodation, generally intended to be short term but people can end up there for quite a while if they're unlucky.

(The Fringe in August is a riot, as I'm sure you can imagine.)

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I'm glad that an emergency has been declared. I'm glad that Shelter's campaigning is working. I just wish (as I'm sure many do) that the emergency had been recognised long ago.

BTW, there's a really interesting interview with Toby Lloyd, who was head of policy for Shelter and then became a government advisor on housing on a recent episode of Pod Save the UK. If you can't be bothered to listen, this written interview covers some similar ground.

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Maybe I should change this thread title into something more general.

The UK’s biggest cities expect at least 6,900 people to be evicted from asylum accommodation by the end of the year, with little capacity to help them.

In London, the change in policy has already led to a doubling in the number of rough sleepers who have recently left asylum accommodation, while Manchester has seen a significant increase.

...

Birmingham has been told to expect 1,000 newly recognised refugees to be leaving asylum accommodation by the end of December – a number that’s usually seen over three years.

https://www.bigissue.com/news/social-ju ... me-office/

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Liverpool is also facing a massive increase in homeless refugees.

In August, in an attempt to tackle the ever growing asylum backlog, the government slashed the number of days before notice is given to those awarded refugee status to leave their Home Office accommodation from 28 to about seven. The Red Cross warned it could result in 50,000 refugees in the UK being made homeless by the end of the year.
...
Liverpool is one of the largest Home Office dispersal accommodation areas in the UK. The council said it expected more than 1,000 asylum seekers in the area to receive decisions from the Home Office by Christmas, and fears hundreds could end up homeless.

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It's grim innit just so many faiings across the board. If asylum seekers were allowed to work this might well have mitigated the problem a bit, although even then finding accommodation in 7 days is a pretty tall order in the current climate.

[Fishnut]

More on the situation in Liverpool. It's a piece in the Liverpool Echo and does an excellent job at humanising these homeless men. Many of them have just had their lives take a wrong turn and have been sent down a path that has been impossible to escape from.

Like many of those on the streets, Craig's life fell apart through a family breakdown and like many he struggles with addiction issues. He says he doesn't feel like anyone is helping him right now.

"The government is doing nothing about this," he says, gesturing at two tents across the way. "I want to get back on my feet but it is all just b******t. I won't go in the hostels, its not a good atmosphere for me."

Craig says he has been attacked five times while sleeping rough and worries what each new day will bring - or if it will come at all.

Hostels being worse than the streets is a common theme, as is the lack of support on offer,

At the corner of the bustling Church Street, close to Liverpool Central Station, Danny Doyle is sat against the wall of the Lloyds bank building. Aside from the clothes he is wearing, he has only a thin sheet to protect him from the cold ground he is sitting on.

Danny's story is not too different to Craig's. "I had a bad family situation," he explains. "I lost my business and I fell out with my mum." He's spent three years on the streets now and he desperately wants a home.

"I have tried the housing loads of times, you just don't hear back. You do lose hope that you will ever get somewhere."

He feels the same way about the hostels as many of the others who are sleeping rough. "I won't go there," he adds.

Things are terrible now and they're getting worse as a result of the government's approach to asylum seekers,

Liverpool is in the grip of a multi-layered and complex homelessness crisis and things are getting worse by the day...

But just as alarming as the numbers that can be seen on the streets of the city right now, are the number who are on the brink of heading the same way.

Liverpool currently has 572 people in emergency bed and breakfast or hotel accommodation, with 407 of those people having already exceeded the six weeks statutory limit for people in such temporary accommodation. The cash-strapped council's spending on temporary accommodation has rocketed from £250,000 to an an anticipated £19m at the end of this financial year.

The crisis is being made even more grave as hundreds of newly registered refugees find themselves homeless and sleeping rough after their fast-tracked Home Office claims have left them with nowhere to go.

The situation has been described as an emergency by council leader Liam Robinson, who has twice written to government to ask for emergency intervention to stop more people ending up on the city's streets. At the time of writing he had not heard back.

Even when people do get accommodation, they aren't given the support they need to stay there,

While a property is the key for many of those currently sleeping rough, it is not always a panacea, particularly during a cost of living crisis.

Krzysztof, who is sat propped against the city's now closed Epstein Theatre, actually has a flat currently, but he can't afford to keep up with his bills, so takes to the city's streets in the hope of a little extra help.

We desperately need a new approach to housing and mental health. All the people in the article suffer from mental health issues and/or addiction issues. They don't have the help they need to get better - and how the f.ck can you improve your mental health when you're literally sleeping in a tent on the streets trying to avoid being pissed on by drunk passers-by?

We're looking at the first cold snap of the winter and I really won't be surprised if we see people die as a result. I have no words to express the extent of my anger that this is accepted, especially in a country as rich as ours.

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We're looking at the first cold snap of the winter and I really won't be surprised if we see people die as a result.

Two men are thought to have died as a result of the recent cold weather. The first death occurred in Beeston, Nottinghamshire, on Friday 1 December. The man was found in a car "which was covered in frost and ice".

The second death occurred in Manchester. The man was found in a shop doorway on Sunday 3 December and was declared dead at the scene.

Neither man has been named. Cause of death has yet to be proven but it seems highly likely that the cold at least played a significant contribution.

Two deaths and winter has barely begun. It's disgusting.

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This is kind of in response to the post before last, but I'm not quoting because I wouldn't want to suggest that what I'm saying is a direct comment on or assumption about what has happened to any of the individuals quoted in the post. I'm also going to try and keep it relatively brief even though that's difficult for this type of topic.

I think one thing we have to reckon with is that many single homeless people are probably more likely than the general population (but not always!) to be within some kind of cycle of abuse, whether this is as victim or perpetrator or both. I'm now mostly talking about single men here but it doesn't always have to be. Sorry also for being a bit heteronormative. Anyway. Single men on the street may have abused their partners and/or become too difficult to live with due to addiction. Some will be easier to help than others, and probably not everyone can be helped. So, I'm pushing the boat out a bit here but well, we have a male violence and harassment against women thread. Of course lots of women end up homeless as a result of having to flee domestic abuse, and are often badly let down when they try and piece their lives back together, emotionally and financially. That's a whole discussion in itself. And, most of the thread's about men in positions of power abusing their power, in fairness. But male violence can happen for all sorts of reasons, in all sorts of contexts. And it shouldn't be excused but sometimes I think it's a bit easier to ignore that there can be an overlap between vulnerable people in seriously unenviable situations and people who have done, and continue to do, things that are seriously antisocial or dangerous.

Again mainly to try and avoid waffling on with a million separate caveats and exceptions, I'm in no way saying that every person who ends up on the street has abused someone, or that where they have we shouldn't be thinking about the victims (because of course we should), nor am I saying we should excuse dangerous behaviour just because the perpetrator has had a hard time. Obviously it's a complicated situation that imo requires proper resources and a multidisciplinary approach.

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Obviously it's a complicated situation that imo requires proper resources and a multidisciplinary approach.

I think this is key. I'm in no way naive enough (however I may seem) to think that everyone who's ended up on the street is a saint who has just had life kick them when they are down. It is clear that homelessness is a complex problem and for some people, even if they are presented with the offer of stable accommodation and support, they are unwilling or unable to accept it.

The problem seems to be that we have had a hollowing out of services over the last decade or so that means that far more people are in need of help and there is less help to go around. That means that the more complex and difficult cases get pushed to the back of the queue. The solution is obvious - more funding to services and more cooperation between services to enable help to be coordinated between the services, as you say. But I doubt we'll see any improvement any time soon.

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I'ts unbelievably depressing, although I'm also all for identifying where there has been success to demonstrate models that can work, as long as they're not presented as 'problem solved' (she says, while doing nothing of the kind in this post...). I'm really not an expert in this but one thing I think is likely to be helpful in terms of addiction is strong local knowledge and understanding of what's happening 'on the ground' - which is probably likely to mean peer support and input. That said I think the concept of 'lived experience' can be exploitative at times so it's important to be careful around that.

Oh and I forgot to say, Glasgow CC has also declared a housing emergency: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-67576618

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There is a recent and quite significant Supreme Court decision about local authorities' duties to comply with statutory duties where they say they don't have the resources to comply. The headline really is that if they have a statutory duty (e.g. to provide accommodation for homeless people), they have to comply with that duty, and if they don't have the resources that's their problem to sort out unless they can show that it really is impossible. However, the question is specifically about when a court can make an mandatory order requiring an authority to comply with a statutory duty, and the Supreme Court does set out five factors that court should consider when deciding to do this.

This was a case where a homeless person - Ms Imam, who uses a wheelchair full time and has three children - applied for homelessness assistance from Croydon Council and the Council accepted it had a duty to provide her with permanent accommodation. She was provided with temporary accommodation that wasn't suitable for her needs as it didn't have a level-access toilet on the first floor for her to use at night, along with other issues. She sought an order from the court requiring Croydon to provide her with suitable accommodation. Croydon accepted it was in breach of its duty to her but argued a mandatory order shouldn't be made, relying on budgetary constraints/lack of resources. The High Court declined to grant a mandatory order. The case eventually made its way to the Supreme Court and here we are.

I won't go through all the public law analysis in detail (interesting as it is) but the gist is: the court won't make a mandatory order that is impossible to comply with, but if a local authority is saying it can't comply with an order, it needs to provide good evidence about why this is the case and also what it is doing about it. It can't just make reference to general funding pressures and say that's enough and the court shouldn't interfere. The impact on the individual of not granting the order is also a relevant factor.

There are some summaries here: https://nearlylegal.co.uk/2023/12/sayin ... resources/ and here https://www.doughtystreet.co.uk/news/su ... -v-croydon and the judgment and press summaries are here: https://www.supremecourt.uk/cases/uksc-2022-0102.html

It's one of those decisions that might well only benefit those who can get lawyers to help them, but it does mean that local authorities can't just say 'oh we don't really have enough money' to avoid being ordered to comply, they have to prove it. This isn't the only case which has reached similar conclusions mind. Can we maybe see a bit more public argy bargy between local authorities and central government over funding please? Surely they're not all so badly mismanaged that they're scared of being found out?

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Almost 140,000 children are homeless according to ITV News.

More than 139,000 children in England will wake up on Christmas Day without a home. It is the highest number on record. They will open presents in a hostel or a bed and breakfast; a hotel room or a cramped, one-bedroom flat that isn’t their own. They may have been staying there a few days; they may have been there for months, perhaps years, sharing a room with their siblings or a sofa bed with a parent. They are England’s homeless children, trapped in temporary accommodation, and their number is growing.
...
Exclusive research for ITV News has found 15,000 households have been living in temporary accommodation for more than five years. That’s one in nine of all households in temporary accommodation.
...
The increase in families presenting to their councils as homeless is pushing some local authorities to the brink of financial ruin. In October more than a hundred councils wrote to the Chancellor warning him they would soon be unable to pay for temporary accommodation for everyone that needed it.

The article ends with some waffle from the government that I'm not going to dignify with quoting. Suffice it to say, they're not doing anything that's actually going to deal with the scale of the problem the country is facing.

[discovolante]

In related news, the Scottish Government has cut the budget for social housing supply, and other funding being promised is vague at best. I don't have time to go into detail right now but some links here: https://www.dailyrecord.co.uk/news/scot ... 719402.amp

https://www.scottishhousingnews.com/art ... using-cuts

Happy days.

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No f.cking sh.t Sherlock!

Report exposes critical links between refugee resettlement and rising rates of UK street homelessness:

https://www.scottishhousingnews.com/art ... melessness

The report, which was written by academics at the University of Huddersfield, delves into statistics revealing a 223% surge in street homelessness for people leaving asylum between June and September 2023. This trend indicates a troubling link between the UK’s asylum system and the growing levels of homelessness.

It's getting worse...

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Among other depressing stats, incidences of people in Scotland not being offered temporary homeless accommodation when they had the right to it increased by 1,400% between April and September 2023 and the 6 months before that: https://scotland.shelter.org.uk/housing ... n_scotland I wonder why... I think it has likely got worse since then.

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You know what, I feel like I'm gaslighting myself or something, because I'm telling myself this situation can't be as bad as I think it is otherwise there wouldn't be such a gaping vacuum of silence in the media. My brain is pickled.