Our ultimate goal must be preventing homelessness

AS many Glasgow residents look with trepidation towards what seems likely to be a challenging winter for them financially – with rising fuel prices and inflation in the cost of living hitting lower-income households – it’s nice to be able to report some genuinely positive progress in one of the most challenging areas for public services: homelessness and rough sleeping.

Three years ago, Glasgow signed up to a global effort to reduce street homelessness by 2030, led by the Institute for Global Homelessness (IGH). A few days ago, it published a report showing that, among their participating vanguard cities, Glasgow is one of only two to have fully met our targets to reduce rough sleeping.

The IGH pointed to several factors, such as the success of our Housing First approach and the wrap-around support which comes with that. And the closure of squalid private-run homeless accommodation like the Bellgrove Hotel, a stain on this city for far too long.

And it was hugely encouraging in the last week to see the Simon Community record the numbers of current rough sleepers in the city at four, each of whom is well known to frontline workers and regularly offered support and services. Hopefully those four people will eventually feel able to take up an offer of accommodation, joining the many other people no longer sleeping rough on our streets – every one a life improved and with the potential to be turned around. That’s something the city can be proud of.

When the SNP became Glasgow’s first new political administration in more than 40 years in 2017, we inherited a number of significant challenges, one of which was a failing homelessness system. These issues had culminated in 2016 with the council being formally censured by the Scottish Housing Regulator for poor performance.

Turning that around was a big priority for the new city government and we knew that the problems wouldn’t be solved by just doing more of the same. There needed to be fresh approaches, bringing in the expertise of outside partners to deliver city-wide solutions to our challenges. Following a city summit bringing together key organisations involved in the housing and homelessness sector, what emerged was a real sense of purpose for constructive collaboration.

Homelessness is a complex problem where several issues including mental ill health, addiction, domestic abuse, discrimination, and failures of housing policy often come together. It’s an issue that the council alone never had all the answers to. If we were to transform and modernise services with the overriding aims of ending rough sleeping and significantly reducing and preventing homelessness in the city, then we’d need to do so in genuine partnership. And because homelessness is a human rights issue, to get this right we also had to work with people with lived experience, those who knew from their own experiences the impact of homelessness on individuals and families. From there, the Glasgow Alliance to End Homeless was created. The first of its kind in the UK, the Alliance has brought together the council and NHS (jointly through the Health and Social Care Partnership), charities, housing providers and people with personal experience of being homeless. It is delivering homelessness services in the city and will continue to do so for up to the next 10 years, with a budget this year of almost £27 million. It’s a major break with the traditional ways of working, with all partners less focused on their organisational and individual goals and more on the outcomes for those experiencing homelessness,

The progress reported by the IGH and the Simon Community are real testament to the work carried out by the Alliance’s teams at ground level every single day of the year. We now have a much better understanding of our vulnerable population who sleep rough in the city centre, with regular face-to-face contact ensuring the required support can be provided.

We’ve still got real challenges in our system. That can’t be denied. The numbers of children living in temporary accommodation is one such issue. Social landlords have really stepped up to the mark by providing good quality furnished flats to meet the demand but the numbers of families staying in these properties has increased significantly due to restrictions on letting during lockdown. We know that the uncertainty that comes with living in temporary accommodation has a negative impact on health and wellbeing, particularly for children. Speeding up the whole process of moving people into permanent accommodation is uppermost in our priorities.

But we want to go beyond that. Our ultimate goal has to be about preventing homelessness in the first place, by tackling the underlying circumstances that force people onto the street or to have to seek assistance and ensuring instead they have the support they need to live safely and securely within our communities as citizens of Glasgow.

AT the time of writing, nine cases of the new Omicron variant of Covid have been identified in Scotland. All have been confirmed within two of the health board areas in the west of the country, Greater Glasgow and Lanarkshire.

With early evidence suggesting the new variant has a higher reinfection risk, it is understandable that people are anxious. And not simply through fear of infection. The restrictions which have been necessary across almost two years of this virus have placed a tremendous strain of the well-being of so many and taken a huge toll on our economy. At present, the number of cases remains low, measures have been put in place to limit the spread of the Omicron strain and we all hope a return to restrictions won’t be required. There has been no suggestion yet that citizens should significantly change their behaviour, with most of those who can work from home continuing to do so.

But Glaswegians should remain vigilant. The expert advice here in Scotland is for residents to significantly step up and increase compliance with all existing precautions. Face coverings should be worn on public transport and indoor public spaces, whilst continuing to wash hands and surfaces will offer some protection. Boosters are being offered to all over-18s, and the wait after a second dose is being cut from six to three months. Children aged 12 to 15 will also now be invited for a second jab. I’d urge anyone who is eligible to take up the offer of the booster or second jab.

And of course, continuing to test yourself with lateral flow kits before mixing with people from other households means we’re all doing our bit to keep Glasgow safe and our economy moving. We really just need to up the ante with what we’re already doing.