Rising homelessness means Glasgow is spending millions of pounds a month on temporary accommodation and hotels.

The city is affected by the housing emergency more than most areas, according to the councillor in charge of homelessness.

While councils all over Scotland have declared a housing emergency, it has been argued Glasgow has specific and more acute pressures that mean it needs its own solutions.


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Allan Casey, Glasgow City Council, convenor for homelessness and addiction, raised the scale of homelessness in Glasgow at a meeting at the SNP conference in Edinburgh.

He said: “I don’t believe the housing emergency is being felt the same across the country.

“We have 6500 open homeless applications, that is a huge challenge."

The current applications, he said, included 7800 adults and 4500 children.

Speaking at a fringe event, organised by Shelter and Scottish Federation of Housing Associations, he added: “There is staff burnout because the caseload they are carrying is so great”.

Casey added: “We provide 4000 households with temporary accommodation every day. We are at huge risk of breaching duties because of the scale.

“We increased the use of B&Bs by 114% and it’s not matching the rate at which individuals are approaching us.”

The Glasgow Times has launched a End the Homesless Hotel Shame campaign to call for better standards of accommodation.


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He noted changes in Scottish law, including ending the no local connection rule where councils could turn people from other areas away, had an impact.

He said: “We welcomed that change but it has not come with funding for the bigger local authorities (who are mostly impacted by it).”

Casey said Glasgow can’t escape the global challenges including the war in Ukraine and the number of people seeking asylum.

He added: “The home office acerated batch processing of asylum decisions” which he branded an “absolute disgrace”.

The councillor added it was done to “try to clear a backlog in hotels to appease the right wing.”

All these issues, he said, were happening at the same time, adding to the pressure on homelessness services in Glasgow and the cost to the council is not insignificant.

Casey said Glasgow is spending £2.5million every month on temporary accommodation including hotels and B&B for emergency accommodation.

He said the solution was to build more social housing.

He added: “It’s not the only answer but the main answer.”

Casey said Glasgow welcomed the national emergency plan put forward by a collective including SFHA and Shelter.

However, he repeated: “We need to look at the local context. The housing emergency is not being felt the same across the country.”

Paul McLennan, Housing Minister, said: “Every local authority is different.”

He said the solution to tackling the housing emergency covered a number of actions.

He said: “We need to build more homes. We need to maximise what we have got and how do we reduce homelessness.”

He added: “I want more money” and said he would be making that case within the Scottish Government and with the UK Government, in the light of expected budget cuts following the forthcoming UK Budget in October.