Finally, Glasgow has woken up to the fact it has a housing emergency.

The city is unable to cope with the relentless demand for accommodation and the increasing volume of people who find themselves without a home for a variety of reasons.

The tipping point for the council seems to have been the expected surge in homeless applications from people granted a positive asylum-seeking decision and who then need to find somewhere to live.

But this development is only turning an already desperate situation into a potential catastrophe.

In reality, this has been coming down the road for a long time and it is now, when the juggernaut is about to hit that the emergency has been declared.

Every three months for the last year the Glasgow Times has been publishing figures, released under Freedom of Information, which show the number of people living in temporary accommodation, the numbers in hotels and B&Bs and the number of children affected.

READ NEXT: Scale of Glasgow's homeless crisis revealed in new figures

It has been rising and has reached alarming levels.

In March this year, the number of people who needed to be accommodated in hotels and B&Bs in the city was 701.

It was already considered too high and the council had a stated aim of ending the use of such hotels as they were deemed unsuitable.

Later in the year, it was announced that one of the hotels used, the Charles Rennie Mackintosh in Union Street would be decommissioned once all those living there were found somewhere to live.

This proved impossible and not only has the hotel been retained, but more are now needed.

This week the Glasgow Times revealed the number of people living in the hotels had broken through the one thousand mark, with 1001 people stuck in a hotel or B&B on November 1.

Previous figures for the cost of the use of hotels across the city, many of which have been described as not fit for people to be housed in, totalled £23.5 million.

READ NEXT: Council bill for hotels in Glasgow for homeless people set to double

This emergency has not suddenly appeared in front of us out of nowhere.

It has been building, steadily and going unchecked until the services are reaching breaking point.

Every level of government has a responsibility and questions to answer for the crisis.

Many of the people in hotels are people who fall into the category of ‘no recourse to public funds’.

Many are people granted refugee status who have no means of paying for a rented home.

This is where the UK Government is actively making a very bad situation very much worse.

It is this month accelerating the decision-making and processing asylum claims in batches that will push hundreds more people, many young men, onto the homeless caseload of the council.

And it is doing so without providing any extra cash for local authorities who are duty-bound to pick up the pieces.

There are not enough homes for social rent in the city. That is why more than five and a half thousand people are stuck in temporary homes.

The council gets flats from social landlords to use as temporary accommodation but then finds there are not enough homes for permanent tenancies to move people into a suitable home quickly.

People can spend a year in temporary accommodation before getting somewhere they can call home.

While the Scottish Government states it has a £3.5bn housing plan, it is clearly either not enough or not being spent effectively.

Shona Robison, Deputy First Minister, just yesterday, said “We have the strongest rights in Scotland for people facing homelessness.”

That is no comfort to someone looking at a cold night outside ahead of them.

It was not comfort to the man we spoke to in August who was told four nights on the trot there was nowhere available for him, not even in a hotel.

On the second night, a Friday, the housing minister, Paul McLennan, was yards away, and when he was told he said he couldn’t do anything until the Monday morning.

Strongest rights, indeed.

READ NEXT:Homeless left on streets and told no rooms left in Glasgow

Glasgow City Council, through the Health and Social Care Partnership, is the authority that has to deal with homelessness on the front line.

For months people have been turned away because there is no available accommodation, it has been reported regularly in these pages.

Budgets for organisations dealing with the social and domestic issues that are a cause of homelessness have been cut.

Cut to the point where it is not surprising that more people are finding themselves without a home.

Just like this crisis, homelessness rarely hits someone out of the blue but rather is the end product of other problems that have not been addressed.

Addiction, debt, and domestic abuse are just some that can, and sadly often do, lead to a person standing in front of a counter in a council office telling a stranger they have nowhere to sleep that night.

The declaration of a housing emergency has to mean urgent action otherwise it is nothing more than warm words.

And words, no matter how warm, do not keep out the cold.