We need clear strategy to help homeless off our streets

The Scottish Government will announce new statistics on homelessness this week.

It would be foolish, bordering on crass, to predict what they might say. In at least one sense, though, it hardly matters.

The scale of the problem is already all too apparent, particularly to anyone who has visited the centre of our major cities in recent weeks.

Brightly coloured tarpaulin is all too visible in the quiet of the night. In shop doorways, in alleys, on the sides of our busiest streets. Makeshift campsites are springing up in the select few city- centre spots that will take a tent peg.

This now means people are sleeping rough in Greyfriars Kirkyard, among other cemeteries across the city and country.

As rough sleeper Kevin Murphy makes clear today, it is a solution borne only of desperation. He and several others are desperately trying to stay alive by sleeping among the dead.

This might not quite constitute a national emergency. It is undoubtedly, though, a situation which requires urgent attention, not just from our politicians but from members of the public, particularly in our cities.

Any announcement of another big rise in homelessness applications made to councils on Tuesday would only sharpen the sense of urgency.

The simple answer is that more has to be done to address the already glaring inequalities in our society. Increased taxes on the highest earners would be an option but is too simplistic on its own. Throwing money at the problem in isolation is nobody’s idea of the answer, though it seems an impossibility to imagine a solution which is not underpinned with greater funding.

There should be a clear strategy developed by government at all levels including our city councils, charities, business leaders and possibly even churches.

In the past 30 years, there have been several innovative projects to tackle an issue which moves people almost unlike any other. But none of them work on their own.

The issue bewilders ordinary folk. Their instinct is usually to help. There is a difference in advice from experts, though, in how to deal with beggars, for example.

Better signposting and advice at Scottish Government level would be a start.

The increasingly joined- up lines of broken people shivering in makeshift shelters are a visible scar.

Some people are just trying to stay alive now by sleeping among the dead

A better, clearer strategy in dealing with this problem should be close to the top of the agenda of almost everyone who can make a difference in 2019.