Unison calls for Scottish Government investment to tackle housing crisis
Staff working in housing and homelessness services are bearing the brunt of welfare cuts across Scotland, according to a new survey.
Unison, the public services trade union, said the majority of its members surveyed – 68% - believed the huge scale of Scotland’s housing crisis had negatively impacted on the quality of service they can provide.
The union is now calling on the Scottish Government to commit to making a large-scale investment in housing to counteract the crisis.
Staff in voluntary organisations and local authorities were surveyed across a range of services – from council housing, housing associations and homelessness/crisis services.
Three quarters of respondents said changes in welfare and benefit legislation has contributed to the problem. And as welfare changes had made life more difficult for tenants, this in turn has created problems for housing staff.
And more than half of respondents said they regularly work over their contracted hours while 58% said staff numbers are in decline, meaning they don’t have as much time to spend with clients.
We urgently need a large scale investment to reverse Scotland’s housing crisis - Mark Ferguson
Almost 70% of workers said their standard of living had dropped in the previous three or four years, with many struggling to make ends meet.
One survey respondent commented: “I work with homeless people, the pressure is increasing relentlessly. Demand is increasing as resources dwindle.”
Mark Ferguson, chair of Unison’s housing issues group, said the survey showed the reality facing frontline staff who are struggling to maintain a quality of service against a background of declining resources and increased financial pressure.
“We have a crisis with the availability, the cost and the quality of our housing and we urgently need a large scale investment to reverse Scotland’s housing crisis,” he warned.
“Any plan for social justice – and Scotland has had no shortage of talk of social justice in recent months – must have housing at its core.”
The most recent Scottish Government housing statistics reveal there are 179,954 households with outstanding applications for social housing; of these some 29,500 are households on transfer lists meaning 150,000 households are waiting to enter social housing.
Rosemary Brotchie, policy manager at Shelter Scotland, said: “This call chimes with what we have been saying for a long time that Scotland is in the midst of a housing crisis – the chronic shortage of affordable social housing means it is harder than ever for people to find and keep a home.
“That’s why Shelter Scotland has consistently campaigned for 10,000 new social homes a year to be built to begin to make up the shortfall caused by decades of underinvestment in Scotland’s social housing.
“We’re calling on the Scottish Government to make this year’s budget a budget for homes and commit at least an additional £200m to social rented house building.”
