London’s Only Homeless Detox Clinic To Close

/in /by

London’s only dedicated drug and alcohol detox unit for homeless people is to close St Thomas’ Hospital has confirmed, reports the BBC.

The Department for Health and Social Care (DHSC) said the decision had been taken due to “rising costs”, adding that the service was “no longer affordable within existing funding”. The clinic, which is based at the hospital, ran with a £1m shortfall over the past year, and “there were also times when beds were underused”, the government added.

Co-founder of the Big Issue magazine and anti-poverty campaigner, Lord John Bird said he was “dismayed” at what he called a “short-sighted cost-cutting exercise”. The unit, which opened in 2021, worked to support people who sleep rough to “safely withdraw from alcohol and drugs as part of the first steps in a treatment journey”. The service also provided peer support, groups, and activities alongside a range of other initiatives focusing on stopping smoking, healthy eating, essential screening, vaccinations and mental wellbeing.

Lord Bird described the closure of the unit as “pulling the service out from beneath the people who desperately need it”. He added: “All we’re doing is pushing these problems back on to the streets. These patients will end up filling up A&Es, they’ll end up being more chaotic, they’ll end up in prisons.” The campaigner said the news of the closure “rubbished” the Mayor of London’s goal of ending rough sleeping in the capital by 2030.

The Mayor’s Office said that the Greater London Authority (GLA) “is not responsible for the unit and its funding”. A spokesperson for the Mayor said: “The mayor does not have powers to commission healthcare, but is committed to supporting vulnerable Londoners and recognises the importance of addiction treatment and detoxification services. That’s why City Hall has sought assurance from the capital’s health authorities that Londoners will continue to have access to detoxification services following this closure, and that any disruption will be kept to a minimum while a new service is developed.”

The BBC asked the DCHS and the City of London Corporation (which funds the service) about the possibility of a new service, as mentioned by City Hall, but neither would comment.

Home Office Pilot Saved 1,000 Refugee Families From Homelessness – Then Rules Changed

/in /by

Refugees were given 56 days to find an income and a place to live under a Home Office pilot. Refugee Council warns reducing that time to 42 days risks more refugees ending up homeless, reports the Big Issue.

Giving refugees 56 days to find an income and a place to live after being evicted from Home Office accommodation prevented an estimated 1,000 refugee households from becoming homeless, Refugee Council has found. The Home Office ran a pilot scheme that extended the move-on period for newly recognised refugees to 56 days, offering them more breathing room to navigate the private rented sector and work with councils to avoid homelessness.  But the pilot scheme has now ended with the move-on period reduced to 42 days from 9 March this year.

Refugee Council warned that the reduced time for newly recognised refugees to find a new home could see homelessness increase beyond its current record-high levels. Imran Hussain, director of external affairs at Refugee Council, said: “Receiving refugee status in the UK should be a moment for people to celebrate and finally start rebuilding their lives in safety, after escaping war and persecution. Instead, they face a ticking clock, endless bureaucratic hurdles, and the threat of homelessness. Refugee homelessness has been driving increases in street homelessness in recent years.”

He added: “We can see what works – the Home Office’s 56-day pilot kept an estimated 1,000 households out of homelessness and eased pressure on overstretched councils. Even with 56 days, many people still struggle to secure housing because the system is complex and the barriers are high – cutting that time further will only push more people into crisis. Refugees want to stand on their own two feet – find work, pay their way and rebuild their lives. But they need a fair chance to do that. The government should learn from this progress and ensure proper support for new refugees to move on, with a system that works in practice, not just on paper.”

Refugee Council’s analysis of statutory homelessness figures showed 15,440 refugee households were supported by local councils in England between January and September 2025. The Homelessness Reduction Act requires councils to take reasonable steps to prevent homelessness for applicants who are at risk of homelessness within 56 days. A total of 10,170 of these were under the relief duty, meaning that councils were required to relieve homelessness. But Refugee Council said that the ratio of homelessness at the end of 2024 showed that an estimated 11,160 households would require support. Despite the extended period to find a home, many refugees still struggled to avoid homelessness.

The charity’s report found 43% of refugee households were able to secure housing during the nine-month pilot. A total of four in five refugees reported finding housing was “difficult” or “very difficult” with many of those who couldn’t find a home ending up staying in hostels, rough sleeping or sofa surfing instead. Awek, who was granted refugee status in 2022, said: “Along with refugee status came a letter telling me to leave the hotel accommodation. Now I was confused but had to leave. There was no proper guidance. I was handed a few contact numbers for support services, but most went unanswered. The silence felt loud. I became homeless for weeks. I slept rough outside and I rode buses with no destination – just to keep moving, just to stay warm. It was extremely cold outside. I would not wish that experience even to my worst enemy.”

The Home Office told Big Issue that the pilot was only intended to be a temporary experiment. The programme was launched in December 2024 and amended in September 2025 to exclude single adults unless they were pregnant, over 65 or had a disability. Home Office representatives added that key findings from the evaluation of the pilot and forecasted impacts on the asylum accommodation estate were considered before the decision was made to set the move-on period to 52 days.

“We have always been clear that this was a pilot programme,” said a Home Office spokesperson. “For individuals granted leave to remain, we are committed to successfully transitioning them from asylum accommodation, which is why we have extended the grace period to 42 days, from 28 days. Work is well underway to close every asylum hotel, with more suitable sites being brought forward to ease pressure on communities and cut asylum costs.”

Big Issue has previously reported on the impact on homelessness when the move-on period was cut to 28 days in 2023. We found that the number of homeless refugee households trebled from 450 to 1,500 following the Home Office decision.

Why Are Homeless People Being Excluded From Social Housing?

/in /by

Some people are not considered for social housing due to fears they will not be able to sustain tenancies because of low incomes or insecure finances – but where else are people meant to live? The Big Issue investigates.

There is a critical shortage of social housing across the UK. This is most acute in England where we are losing more homes for social rent than we are building. Last year we saw a net loss of nearly 4,000 social rented homes against a backdrop of rising homelessness. There are record levels of households trapped in temporary accommodation and rough sleeping continues to rise, trends which are driven by a shortage of genuinely affordable homes.

Given the current shortfall in supply, how we distribute the available social homes has never been more important. This year’s UK Housing Review shows overall social lettings in England have remained relatively stable (264,000) after a sharp decline since 2019-20. Lettings to new tenants in the social rented sector have also remained at a similar level (122,800 general needs lets) but are still 24% lower than 10 years ago. More positively, lets to homeless households have increased on the previous year (now at 75,000) and there has been a 37% increase in the last five years. Whilst the increase in lets to homeless households is welcome news, it is set against a significant rise in homelessness. We also know there is large variation in local practice by local authorities and housing associations when it comes to the proportions of lets being made to people experiencing homelessness.

Recent research by Crisis, conducted with Heriot-Watt University and the UK Collaborative Centre for Housing Evidence, has shone a further light on current housing association allocations practices. It shows the difficulties people on the lowest incomes face in accessing social housing, as housing associations are forced to exclude applicants on the basis of their income. Based on a survey of housing associations across Britain, around a third of responding English housing associations said that pre-tenancy affordability checks often brought to light new information which led to an offer of housing being deemed unsuitable for an applicant. Nearly a quarter of responding housing associations (24%) also said that households below a certain income threshold are sometimes excluded from the housing register from which they receive applications for social housing lettings.

The result is that some applicants are not considered for a social home due to fears the offer is unsuitable and they will not be able to sustain tenancies because of low incomes or insecure finances. But the question remains, if you cannot access social housing, where else are you meant to live? We know there are huge challenges facing the housing association sector. The ongoing impact of welfare reform was a significant contributing factor in making these decisions. Restrictions to housing benefit and the benefit cap meant housing associations have needed to conduct more affordability checks. Compounding these concerns are the ever-increasing land and building costs alongside trying to bring existing stock up to new efficiency standards.

Yet there are areas of good practice that show what can be achieved. Where common allocations policies and/or a common housing register existed across local authorities and social landlords, there were more efficient ways to allocate homes. Further, a Scottish-style system could significantly improve allocations to homeless households. While a quarter of English housing associations reported often refusing nominations from the local authority because the offer was ‘unsuitable’, this was reported by only 6% of Scottish housing associations. A key difference between England and Scotland is the mandatory nature of ‘Section 5’ nominations, which require Scottish housing associations to rehouse statutorily homeless households referred to them by local authorities within a ‘reasonable period’ unless they have a ‘good reason’ not to do so.

England’s recently published National Plan to End Homelessness is considering all levers to require social landlords to rehouse homeless households “including legislating if necessary”. This could make a large difference to accessing homes now. While there remain structural factors that must be tackled – more investment and minimum targets for social rent homes and tackling the welfare deficit – we must ensure the very system that was set up to help people most in need does not continue to exclude people facing homelessness.

‘The Night Hotel Refused Me Entry Changed My Life’

/in /by

When homeless Calumn Donaghey was turned away from a Holiday Inn Express hotel even after a charity had booked him a room, he felt “disgusting”, reports the BBC.

The 30-year-old and a friend had been told the Manchester city centre hotel’s policy did not allow homeless people to stay – a stance the company later apologised for. Calumn, from Openshaw in Manchester, said at the time he did not know that crushing moment on a freezing cold January night would be life-changing. But he has now been clean of drugs for several months and is living in a rehabilitation centre – and said he felt he “had got his life back” after nearly a decade on the streets.

Referring back to the night when his booking was refused, he told the BBC: “I thought, ‘Am I actually that character, am I viewed that way now?’ “It just made me think I had to change.” Calumn’s life began to spiral out of control in his early twenties when he began experimenting with drugs. As his family relationships broke down and he found himself homeless, he “found crack cocaine” and what he saw as a “street family”. Years of addiction and mental health struggles followed, with many of his days spent trying to score drugs around Manchester’s Piccadilly Gardens or trying to find a bed for the night.

Talking about his lowest moment on the streets, Calumn recalled one night a few weeks before he was turned away from the Holiday Inn on 6 January this year. “I was lying on the floor and looked up at the stars and I actually laughed, but laughed in a sad way,” he said. “I was thinking ‘Wow, I have adapted to this so much. I’m looking into the sky like this is my bedroom’.” He added: “Just the fact that I found it so normal, in a sad way, that it was okay to just put my head on the pillow and fall asleep.”

After being refused entry into the Holiday Inn, a Travelodge in Moss Side agreed to take him in. He then spent a few nights off the streets, and that ended up playing a crucial role in his recovery. Asked how important a night off the streets can be to someone sleeping rough, he said: “It’s the fact of the warmth, the fact of you have time to shower, get clean and sit on the bed for a minute and think. You can sit in your own mind inside there. When you’re on the road, there’s too much going on and just too much in your face. People give you money and stuff, so you’re going to go to drugs. Just being in there for one night can change lives.”

Calumn said the nights off the street in that Travelodge gave him the “kickstart” to decide try to get clean from drugs and off the streets. “It’s going to sound crazy but there was a mirror in front of me and that one night with that mirror, it was just like me, myself and I communicating, like ‘Come on, you’re worth more than this’.”

For Amanda Thompson, co-founder of the Manchester homelessness charity Two Brews, which booked the hotel rooms for Calumn, his recent progress has been joyful to witness. “It just makes you dead proud. It makes you happy. It kind of makes you realise you do what you do for a reason,” she said. “Some days you have your down days and you just think, ‘Shall I carry on, shall I keep doing what I’m doing?’ “And then you just think, well, yeah, you see how it comes like this and you think, ‘It’s all worth it’.”

How A Cafe Changed A Homeless Mother’s Life

/in /by

A homeless mother has credited a cafe with turning her life around “against all odds” and ensuring she kept custody of her young son, reports the BBC.

The mostly volunteer-led Curry on the Street in Nelson has delivered close to 60,000 hot meals and emotional support to those in need for decades – and is now being awarded a donation by Comic Relief, ahead of Red Nose Day. Since she started volunteering for the cafe, whilst still on the street, Sionne has had a child and celebrated two years sober from drink and drugs. She praised the centre’s manager James Foy who she said took the role “home with him”, whilst she is looking forward to her new life with her son, JJ, in her native Scotland.

When Sionne, now 39-years-old, fell pregnant whilst on the street, it was James who she first confided in. After losing custody of her first two kids in Scotland because she was a drug-addict, Sionne was scared it would happen for a third time. She said: “James said to me ‘listen even if you didn’t manage to succeed the first time, you don’t give up – I’ll be here for you, I’ll support you through thick and thin’. “He’s gone over and above what anybody in any type of centre I would have imagined would have done, James was the person who believed in me.”

Now she is “proud as punch” to be the mother of her one-year-old son, with the pair of them living a “fabulous” life. “I would have never thought I’d be able to have [JJ] in my care – I would have been one of those people who you’d want to keep your child away from because of the risk I imposed.”

Sionne volunteers at the centre everyday, she said, whilst her son JJ rings “Uncle James” every morning before they leave. Sionne said she now wants to carry on her volunteering work at the centre, to make JJ “proud” of her. The centre is staffed by around six cooks every day, one of whom is Keeley, who has been a volunteer for two years. The centre sells food to the local community, but the homeless and kids eat free.

Keeley was a beneficiary of the centre’s help when she dropped off a bag of her husband’s clothes as a donation, whilst out of work on sick leave. She said: “They help anybody who needs it – whether that’s addiction or mental health. We do emotional support, essentials bags, food parcels and outreach in Burnley providing sleeping bags,” she said.

Founded in 2019, Curry on the Street hopes to improve the lives of those who come through its doors – giving out hot meals and clothing in a “stigma-free” environment. Its manager Foy said the space allows its customers, usually the homeless and vulnerable, to “sit, have a chat, a brew or a meal”. Whilst the Comic Relief donation will be spent on new furniture and food, Foy said. “We have all types of people, from different backgrounds, it doesn’t matter who you are, or what you are, it doesn’t matter – we accept everyone coming through the door,” he said.

Do Settled Migrants Really Get ‘Immediate Access’ To Social Housing?

/in /by

Shabana Mahmood claimed settled migrants would “receive immediate access to social housing” if Labour didn’t step in. The Big Issue asks: Is it true?

Certain politicians would have you believe Brits can’t a social home because immigrants get priority access. This claim has dogged British politics for a long time: back in 2024 the Tories floated the idea of so-called ‘British homes for British workers’. Meanwhile, Reform UK’s Zia Yusuf made the disputed claim that “the majority of social housing in London goes to foreign nationals” on Newsnight back in November last year.

It most recently cropped up in an article penned by home secretary Shabana Mahmood. In a Guardian op-ed, the Labour politician claimed that low-skilled workers would “receive immediate access to welfare and social housing” if Labour did not make them wait longer to apply for settlement. Alongside ending permanent refugee status and temporarily halting student visas from certain countries, the government is doubling the length of time required before many people can gain settlement rights from five to 10 years. Failure to do so would “place yet more pressure on already stretched public services,” Mahmood wrote, and piling pressure on the country’s limited social housing stock.

It’s a more subtle iteration of a familiar refrain: immigrants are filling up social homes. Under a Reform government, Nigel Farage recently pledged, welfare would be for UK citizens only. “It will not be for foreign-born nationals. We are not the world’s food bank.” So is there any truth in Mahmood’s claim? New migrants aren’t eligible for social housing except in very limited circumstances. Most people who come to the UK on visas to work or study have “no recourse to public funds” and can’t receive benefits or get help with their housing. Asylum seekers cannot apply for council housing at all.

To be fair, the home secretary’s claim relates specifically to people with settled status – previously a designation obtainable after five years’ continuous residence in the UK, now requiring a decade. It’s true that obtaining settled status makes migrants eligible for social housing, opening up a door that was previously shut. But eligibility doesn’t mean automatic access – those who have it must still satisfy a habitual residence test and clear the same eligibility hurdles as anyone else.

“The implication of Mahmood’s comments is that settled migrants will be given a council house fairly immediately,” said Jonathan Portes, professor of economics and public policy at King’s College London. “But people who get settled status just have the same access to social housing that I do or you do. So they have to meet a bunch of other conditions relating to our personal circumstances, income, family, etc. before they can even join the queue.”

Most people who have working in the UK for five years exceed earning thresholds, Portes says: “The chances of them being eligible for social housing, let alone actually getting a council house, are quite low.” Many councils also have “local connection” rules favouring long-standing residents. “Migrants generally have much less ‘right’ to a social home than people born in the UK,” says the Chartered Institute for Housing, “and often have far less chance of getting one even if they eventually become eligible.” Supporting local connection rules is not “necessarily a xenophobic position” says Portes – the same rules apply for an “internally mobile Brit” who opted to move from Lancashire to London, for example. But migrants taking homes is “just not a big problem or part of the housing crisis story”.

In 2021, 15% of people living in social housing were born outside the UK, figures from Migration Observatory show – slightly lower than the foreign-born share of the UK population overall. Being born abroad is also not evidence that someone is not British. A report widely shared last year claimed 48% of London’s council homes are occupied by migrants, based on 2021 Census figures. But Reuters analysis found that 68% of those “foreign-born” lead tenants hold a British passport – and the figures don’t account for other household members, including children born in the UK.

So, if not migrants, why are waiting lists so long? The answer is a lack of supply. The root cause is decades of failing to build social homes, accelerated by Right to Buy; more than two million council homes have been sold under the scheme since 1980. There are now 1.34 million households on social housing waiting lists in England. Big Issue has previously reported on how housing-poor councils are losing millions buying back ‘yo-yo homes’ they were forced to sell under Right to Buy just a few years earlier.

At the request of Portes, the Guardian amended Mahmood’s claim. “Settlement status only gives people the eligibility to apply for welfare and social housing,” the correction reads. “It does not give them instant or automatic access to such benefits.” Portes welcomed the change. “If she had said that over the next ten years, based on previous figures, we might expect 1% of them [settled migrants]  to move into social housing – that would have been okay. But that’s not what she said,” he added.

The Community Group Taking On ‘Absentee Landlords’

/in /by

The People’s Property Portfolio’s community share offer aims to buy up and restore a listed building for artists in Bradford to offer UK City of Culture legacy, reports the Big Issue.

A Bradford co-operative is giving residents the opportunity to have a stake in how a local building is brought back into community control, as it is set to become a multi-use workspace for local artists and cultural organisations. Through a community share offer campaign, the People’s Property Portfolio (PPP) is allowing people to buy social investment shares from £50 to help raise funds to restore and renovate 17-21 Chapel Street, a Grade II listed building in Bradford’s city centre.

PPP is aiming to bring buildings back into long-term community ownership after seeing community groups and artists “forced out of spaces by absent landlords or property developers”. In November 2025, the group acquired the building at 17-21 Chapel Street, originally a Quaker school for boys before becoming home to the Bradford Resource Centre, a group of activists and trade union movements. With the building since falling into disrepair, PP plans to “revitalise” it as an arts hub, using the community share offer campaign to fund its refurbishment.

“For too long, we have seen artists forced out of the temporary spaces that they have improved by landlords that want to profit from their efforts,” PPP’s chair Harry Jelley told the Big Issue. “We also regularly see community organisations priced out of the rental market. We’re asking for investment from local people, and supporters from beyond Bradford, who care about a democratic vision for our city, keeping the doors of this heritage building open. We don’t want a city centre determined for us by greedy developers or rogue landlords who don’t care about how Bradford works for the people – just the future commercial value of their properties.”

PPP claims that if the 17-21 Chapel Street restoration is a success, it will continue the project over a number of other buildings and spaces. Jelley said: “We have our first property, and we are in this position of vitally needing funds to get us through this next stage towards capital works on the project.” Explaining that the group has building consent and planning permission to do the work, he explained that the share offer is about securing the funds to “bring the building into use. It’s about reinvigorating what’s been an empty building for the last 20 years and getting it to the state where it can serve the community again,” Jelley added.

He explained that the building would have a “huge impact” on the arts in Bradford, which was named the UK City of Culture in 2025, an honour that Jelley said “cemented our drive to make special things happen in our city and build on that with the ambition and talent here in our district. There are so many good arts and community organisations in Bradford that are doing incredible work with communities, but they’re always having to think about where they might be next year or next month,” Jelley said. “What we want to do is be a socially-minded landlord that provides secure tenancies in buildings that are fit for purpose, so they can do all of that work and not always be having to manage a building as well as operate out of it.”

Explaining the need to bring arts venues back into community hands, Jelley spoke about a building which collapsed on Dale Street in Bradford in December 2025, which had reportedly been empty for years. “This is what happens when the landlords who own these buildings are absentee… or holding it as an asset and aren’t interested in how these spaces can work for the community,” he said. “Bradford city centre is just peppered with these buildings that deserve way more care, and our communities deserve to have a city centre where these buildings are working for us. We want to challenge all of those structures that mean that our city centres aren’t thriving, and that wealth is extracted from the city rather than being held in the hands of the people.”

He added that by investing in PPP with the share offer, “you’re not only giving vital resource to get us through these next few years, but also you’re becoming a member, and that means that you can join meetings… you can vote for who’s on the board, you can have a key say in those big decisions for our organisation”. He added: “You don’t have to be living in Bradford or from Bradford to invest, or to want to invest,” he added. “We’re trying to do things differently here and show that community ownership of space and in our city centres can help our cities thrive, and if you believe in that, then it’s worth investing.”

The first stage of the community share offer will run until 16 April.

‘No-One Who Served Their Country Should Be Homeless’

/in /by

Veterans living in Kent are supporting a major campaign to raise awareness of former service people who are homeless, reports the BBC.

The Great Tommy Sleep Out runs throughout March and is organised by the Royal British Veterans Enterprise (RBVE). Individuals and groups can take part in the fundraising challenge to sleep outdoors for one night or more.

Matt Moses, who served in the US army, said: “No-one who served for their country should ever be homeless”. The 52-year-old said he had found readjusting to civilian life difficult and “had struggled to find a purpose”. “Veterans face homelessness often because of the weight of service, and some traumatic experiences can be soul-crushing,” he said.

Moses, who works at the RBVE factory in Aylesford, explained some veterans lost “a sense of structure, purpose, and themselves”, and struggled to communicate their challenges to other people. “This leads to destructive behaviours and hopeless thought patterns,” he said.

Steve, who also works at the RBVE factory, served in the Royal Logistic Corps. He left the army because he wanted to look after his daughter, who was born just as he joined the service. “Those four years were tough, and being apart took its toll on all of us,” he said. “After I left the army, I wasn’t in a good headspace, it felt like everything was going wrong and I couldn’t fix any of it.”

Both Moses and Steve have taken part in the Great Tommy Sleep Out hoping to raise awareness of the “harsh realities” many veterans face when they leave the army. Lisa Farmer, chief executive of RBVE, said the organisation had helped hundreds of veterans.

“We have found veterans sleeping in cars, woodlands and couch surfing,” she said. “Some are homeless because of situations including relationship breakdowns and PTSD. Some veterans don’t seek help at first because of pride, they were trained to solve difficult situations.”

Farmer said the money raised through the Great Tommy Sleep Out would support RBVE services. “We offer emergency accommodation, housing support, jobs at our factory and help veterans reconnect with the community,” she added.

Councils’ Temporary Housing Costs To More Than Double By 2029-30

/in /by

Local Government Association says figure to house homeless people in England will reach almost £4bn, reports the Guardian.

The cost to councils of providing temporary accommodation for homeless people in England is projected to more than double to almost £4bn by 2029–30, the Local Government Association (LGA) has said. The national membership body for councils found that since 2017-18, local authorities across England had spent almost £1.5bn more on temporary accommodation (TA) than had been reimbursed in housing benefit from the government.

Without intervention, this figure is set to balloon to £3.9bn in the next four years, the LGA said as it urged the government to take action to help councils facing soaring demand and funding pressures. It also found that the annual cost to councils of TA was set to grow by 65% in the next five years, from nearly £360m to £595m.

Tom Hunt, the chair of the LGA’s inclusive growth committee and leader of Sheffield city council, said the TA “subsidy gap is a problem that is getting worse each year. Because of this ever-widening issue, councils are caught in a vicious cycle of ever-increasing temporary accommodation costs versus static rates they receive back to cover their costs,” he said.

The scale of the temporary accommodation crisis in England, in which homeless people are placed in hotels, B&Bs or self-contained flats, shows no sign of abating after soaring to record levels following the Covid pandemic. Last week, data showed the number of children living in temporary accommodation had increased to the highest levels on record, up 12,020 in a year to 175,990. More than 130,000 households live in TA in total.

Local authorities cover the cost of temporary accommodation, and the amount they can claim back from the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) is capped at 90% of local housing allowance (LHA) rates set back in 2011. The LGA said the problem was getting worse as the demand for temporary accommodation rises and councils can claim back less. In 2024-25, councils in England spent a total of £1.27bn on temporary accommodation and were reimbursed £911m by the DWP – leaving a gap of almost £360m.

“We urge the government to uprate housing benefits to 90% of the current [2024] LHA rate,” said Hunt. “This would give a huge boost to council finances, money which could go towards preventing homelessness and building the homes that our communities desperately need.” The LGA said this change would reduce the projected cost increase by 37% and save councils £1.5bn.

The government has vowed to reduce the use of temporary accommodation to house people, with the homelessness minister, Alison McGovern, saying she wanted to end the use of B&Bs by the end of the parliament. Despite calls from across the homelessness sector for a boost, the government has frozen local housing allowance rates until 2026, and instead said building more homes and tackling bad practice in the private rented sector would solve the problem.

A government spokesperson said: “We’re tackling the impact of rising rents and the housing shortage with our commitment to build 1.5m homes – including the biggest boost to social and affordable housing in a generation. We are also investing more than £1bn in homelessness services, launching a cross-government homelessness strategy, and investing a record £39bn in affordable and social housing.”

‘Shocking’ Number Of Homeless Deaths In Scotland

/in /by

An estimated 231 people died while homeless in Scotland in 2024. Crisis Scotland called for a ‘laser focus on ending all forms of homelessness’ to prevent people dying on the streets, reports the Big Issue. The number of people who died while homeless in Scotland remains at “shocking” levels, a homelessness charity has warned in a plea for politicians to take action ahead of the upcoming Scottish elections.

Figures released by National Records of Scotland (NRS) on Tuesday (3 March) found there were an estimated 231 deaths of people experiencing homelessness in Scotland in 2024. This was slightly lower than the previous year, in which 242 deaths were recorded, but higher than when figures were first recorded in 2017. The figures come after the Scottish government found there were 2,092 households reporting a household member experiencing rough sleeping between 1 April to 30 September 2025 across the country.

Charities have explained that they had hoped to see homelessness fall since the pandemic, explaining that it is “shocking” to see that progress has “stalled”. “It’s completely unacceptable that 231 people died in Scotland in 2024 waiting for a home,” said Maeve McGoldrick, head of policy and communications at Crisis Scotland. “Levels of homelessness, and rough sleeping in particular, have risen since the pandemic to alarming highs. We had hoped to see a significant decrease but it’s shocking that progress has stalled and the number of deaths in 2024 was almost the same as the previous year.”

According to the NRS report, the level of homeless deaths was highest in the City of Edinburgh, followed by Glasgow City. The figures found that around half (49%) of the people experiencing homelessness who died in 2024 were aged under 45. In addition, 78% of the homeless deaths recorded were male, and 22% were female. Of the specific causes of death, drug misuse deaths were most common, followed by alcohol misuse deaths and probable suicides.

McGoldrick explained that the figures illustrate the “traumatic” nature of homelessness. “Living in temporary accommodation where you don’t feel safe, or sleeping in a freezing car, or moving between the homes of friends and acquaintances just to have a roof over your head, takes a huge toll on people’s mental and physical health,” she said. “A laser focus on ending all forms of homelessness is needed to drive down these numbers.”

McGoldrick added that the figures highlight exactly how homelessness must be tackled, for example the disproportionate amount of homeless male deaths show the “struggle to access the necessary wraparound support” as “many will be single” and therefore lower down on waiting lists for support. She added that the issue must be addressed in May’s Holyrood elections. “We know what’s required and that’s why we are calling on all political parties to commit to ending homelessness by 2040 in their upcoming manifestos,” she said.

“This means building more truly affordable homes in the places that need them the most, giving wraparound help to people much earlier on, ideally before they become homeless, and being more strategic and impactful with how money is spent – making sure that it reduces homelessness across Scotland.”

The Scottish government published an emergency action plan to tackle homelessness in 2025 after declaring a housing emergency. Ministers pledged to invest £4.9 billion over the next four years to build 36,000 affordable homes, and provide homes for up to 24,000 children. Ministers also promised to implement Awaab’s Law to address housing hazards such as dangerous damp and mould after the tragic death of two-year-old Awaab Ishak due to exposure to mould in his home. McGoldrick added that it’s important to note homeless deaths are “not inevitable”, and there must be the “political will” to end homelessness for good.