Tackling the Housing Emergency - Homeless Network Scotland Conference

Cyrenians Relationships manager & member of the Board of Directors at Homeless Network Scotland Laura Van der Hoeven reflects on the latest HNS Conference & the need for a truly cross government approach to tackling the causes and consequences of homelessness.

It was wonderful to join Homeless Network Scotland at Perth Concert Hall for their annual conference last week. It’s always energising to come together with folks from other organisations working in our sector, and have the opportunity to hear about all the amazing work providing life changing and often lifesaving support.

I enjoyed hearing from respected academics like Suzanne Fitzpatrick, and Ken Gibb, about what the latest research has to teach us about homelessness and its drivers, but it was obvious throughout the conference that the energy in the room was tinged with frustration. This was a conference full of people on the frontline of Scotland’s Housing Emergency. Attended by people who feel that they are increasingly being asked to do an impossible job trying to support people who are being badly let down by a failing system. Despite 12 local authorities and the Scottish Parliament formally declaring a Housing Emergency, it's not obvious that the Scottish Government is providing any type of emergency response. Paul McLennan, the Housing Minister who attended the conference was challenged on this point more than once. “The role of Government is not merely to empathise and analyse” said the Chair “it is to lead and to act.”

Following the UK Budget announcement Cyrenians, and many others in the sector, are lobbying hard for the Scottish Government to use the additional money they have been allocated to urgently reverse cuts to the Affordable Housing Supply programme. There are early indications the Scottish Budget will offer some comfort here, but re-instating a budget that should never have been cut in the first place is hardly the decisive leadership the sector is clamouring for.

And yet, although he is accountable, it seems to me that this emergency is a heavy burden for a solitary Housing Minister to carry – heavier still for any small, usually under resourced, Housing Team in any one local authority. Discussions throughout the conference centred on the need for reform of the welfare system, the immigration system, the care system, the justice system, health services, mental health services… the list goes on. Yet all the Scottish Government representatives sent to address the conference had “housing” in their job title.

Among the many inspiring stories shared from the stage was a re-telling of the heroic landing of US Airways Flight 1549 on the Hudson River. The lives of all 155 people on board and countless others were saved when the heroic Captain “Sully” Sullenberger successfully carried out an emergency landing on the river after the plane hit a flock of birds and lost engine power. Afterwards, reflecting on that day’s events he shared how calmed he felt when he issued the instruction “brace for impact!” and he heard his crew immediately begin to instruct the passengers with the chant “head down, stay down!” – he knew then that they were not panicking but delivering the safety protocols they had been trained for. He knew when he heard them that he could trust them to evacuate the passengers to safety, if only he could land the plane.

Applying this logic to the housing emergency we face now, those responsible for scaling up the delivery of social housing and identifying those in need of housing support need to know that everyone around them is doing their bit to make their part of the system work. The housing and homelessness system needs to be able to rely on effective health, immigration and welfare systems. It will certainly crash if it has to fight against them, which is in large part, what we are witnessing now.

That is why Cyrenians Strategic Plan explicitly sets out a goal to lift homelessness from being siloed as a housing issue to homelessness being understood across all sectors as a public health issue. We know homelessness impacts on the health of the nation, on the outcomes of our young people, on the life expectancies of people living in dangerous, lonely and precarious circumstances. A housing crisis is often a late marker in the lives of people who have already experienced adversities such as childhood poverty, trauma, abuse and mental and physical ill-health. Homelessness is always a housing issue. But we must move away from an approach to the Housing Emergency that sees the solutions solely in addressing the lack of available accommodation without addressing the underlying reasons why people become homeless in the first place. To move beyond this crisis and end homelessness in Scotland we need a truly cross government approach that delivers the housing we need, guarantees that no one will leave the care of the state in to homelessness and consigns poverty and destitution to history.

I’m grateful to Homeless Network Scotland for inviting Cyrenians and Public Health Scotland to co-present on this topic and for hosting such an informative and valuable event.

Laura van der Hoeven is Senior Relationships Manager at Cyrenians and a member of the Board of Directors at Homeless Network Scotland.