The call from Shelter came after figures showed nearly 3,300 council and housing association tenants were either evicted last year or quit their homes after eviction orders were granted.
Most were for rent arrears, said Shelter, which compiled the figures.
Its second annual report on eviction said progress had been made on reducing the scale of the problem, but more needed to be done.
The report showed councils took 13,323 tenants to court last year, eventually evicting 1,773, a drop of 15% from the previous year.
Social landlords raised 6,385 court actions and evicted 1,524 tenants, a rise of 3%.
The housing charity called for the Scottish Government to give families facing eviction from social housing the same legal protection as struggling homeowners.
This would include pre-court protection setting out actions social landlords must take before cases reach the courts.
Shelter also wants councils and social landlords to follow examples such as Stirling, which it said became the first local authority in the UK to ban evictions for rent arrears.
A revised rent arrears policy by Glasgow Housing Association (GHA) led to a 24% drop in evictions, it said.
Gordon MacRae, head of external relations at Shelter, said: "We know that eviction for rent arrears remains a crude and ineffective way of dealing with debt problems.
"This is highlighted by GHA's new approach and the fact that while local authority evictions have dropped, the overall arrears bill for councils has increased."
He went on: "All social landlords must continue to focus on keeping people in their homes and follow in the footsteps of good practice.
"But where this doesn't happen, the most effective measure must be for the Scottish Government to bring in legal protections for social tenants, similar to those being proposed for homeowners, which would ensure eviction really is a last resort.
"Scotland has set a target to give everyone the right to a home by 2012. Evicting people and then housing them under homeless legislation, at a cost to the taxpayer, is simply ludicrous."
Housing minister Alex Neil later said the Government expected social landlords to exhaust "all reasonable options" before resorting to eviction.
He said: "We recently held an event with key stakeholders to consider how the overall number of evictions in the social sector could be reduced, and we are currently progressing a number of actions.
"These include exploring options to improve the consistency and rigour of the evictions process such as pre-court requirements."
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