Pandemic has worsened plight for many homeless people

Applications for homelessness and the use of temporary accommodation by local authorities saw increases during June, the Scottish Housing Regulator has found.

The number of people who applied to local authorities as homeless increased by 18% since the month before to 2,923, and the number of households in temporary accommodation increased by 7% to 13,875.

The figures were published in the third in the regulator’s series of monthly dashboard reports to help understand the impact of the coronavirus on social landlords and to support the work of the Social Housing Resilience Group.

Arrears of rent owed by tenants of social landlords increased by just over £3.75 million, although the overall rate of increase was less than half that for the previous month. RSL arrears increased by 1% with local authority arrears increasing by 3.4%.

The number of empty homes rose by nearly 13% to just over 9,300, even though landlords let nearly 1000 homes more than in the previous month.

Since April, all social landlords provide the regulator with a monthly return of a small set of key measures that focus on the main areas of impact on landlords’ operations.

From June this includes information on landlords’ use of notice of proceedings and evictions.

This is to assist the Scottish Government to discharge its duty to report to Parliament on the effectiveness of provisions in the Coronavirus (Scotland) Act 2020 extending notice periods for recovery of possession by social landlords.