The Scottish Government has welcomed statistics showing a fall in the number of homeless households, but critics warned the figures showed more people forced to live in temporary accommodation.
Scotland's councils received 9,059 applications for help from homeless individuals and families from July to September last year - a fall of about 300 compared to the same period in 2013. But despite this there were 10,300 households in temporary accommodation, an increase on the previous year.
A report issued by Shelter based on freedom of information requests revealed that more than 2000 households spent over a year in temporary accommodation.
The charity said temporary accommodation varied widely and 60% of families - 22,000 households - spent some time in temporary lodgings, while local authorities looked for a permanent let.
Graeme Brown, Director of Shelter Scotland, said: "Long stays in temporary accommodation are detrimental to people's health and wellbeing, particularly children, so it is very worrying that 1 in 10 homeless households spent more than a year without a home.
"We need to make sure that, where long-term stays can't be avoided, minimum standards of accommodation must be met. We want to see the development of guidance on minimum standards for all households in temporary accommodation."
He said a shortage of homes for social rent was the key issue: "We need to build at least 10,000 new homes for social rent each year for the foreseeable future if we are going to start tackling our housing crisis."
The Scottish Federation of Housing Associations also said more new homes were needed.
Maureen Watson, SFHA Head of Policy, said: "The SFHA is pleased to see a reduction in homeless applications. However, the number of households in temporary accommodation has risen slightly. The fact remains that there is a chronic shortage of appropriate affordable rented housing across Scotland."
Jim Hume, Scottish Liberal Democrat spokesman for housing and health said temporary accommodation should not be used to ensure government homelessness targets were met. He said: "You don't have to live on the street to be homeless. Temporary accommodation cannot become a leaning post in efforts to meet homelessness targets."
The Scottish Government said it was "encouraging" that homelessness applications have fallen by 36% in five years.
Housing minister Margaret Burgess said: ""We are working closely with local authorities and their partners to prevent homelessness, increase the number of affordable homes and address the issue of empty homes."
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules hereComments are closed on this article