Scottish Government
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Homeless figures down
Scotland's councils reported a reduction in lets to homeless people in 2009-10, according to figures published this week.
This is against a background of a reduction in overall applications for homeless status at 56,669 in 2009-10, down 1.6 per cent from 57,595 the previous year.
The figures represent the lowest numbers of applications since 2002-03.
There was also a drop in numbers of children or pregnant women in temporary accommodation, down to 3,724, a 3 per cent decrease since March 2008.
The percentage of homeless applications assessed by councils as priority need reached 85 per cent, an increase of 2 percentage points previous figures in 2008-09 indicating progress towards the 2012 homelessness target.
By 2012 every unintentionally homeless person will be entitled to settled accommodation.
A steering group formed by the Scottish Government and CoSLA is charged with promoting the exchange of good practice and monitoring progress towards meeting the target.
Housing and Communities Minister Alex Neil said:
"Making sure all unintentionally homeless people have the same rights by 2012 is a challenging target in challenging economic times, but the Scottish Government remains committed to reaching that goal.
"It is clear from today's figures that councils are working to ensure more homeless people than ever before have the right to settled accommodation, or at least temporary accommodation as well as advice and assistance.
"We have acted decisively to boost the supply of affordable housing, ploughing in record levels of funding - more than £1.7 billion over three years.
"And we have invested £80 million to kick-start the largest council house building programme for 30 years, which will lever more than £300 million investment by local authorities to support 3,300 new council houses in 23 local authorities across Scotland
"However, I am concerned that any progress towards 2012 will be undermined by the changes to Housing Benefit, as currently proposed by the UK Government. The likely impact of these will be a matter for ongoing discussion between this Government and CoSLA."
