“It’s grimmer than it’s ever been. Rough sleeping is our new norm.”
Cazzah from Edinburgh was let down by the homelessness system(Image: Sunday Mail)
Scottish university lecturers and office workers are among those slipping into homelessness as politicians have been warned they must get a grip of the spiralling emergency. Frontline workers have said Scotland faces a “huge reckoning” if the crisis is not fixed, leaving young people and professionals at risk of becoming destitute amid the rocketing cost of living.
They revealed shocking stories of how a “broken system” is letting down some of society’s most vulnerable. The Sunday Mail told how homeless charity Crisis Scotland is urging all parties to back its vision of ending homelessness by 2040 ahead of polling day on May 7.
But record numbers of adults and kids are homeless, with 10,480 children stuck in grim temporary housing – and nearly 2100 Scots reported rough sleeping last year, the Sunday Mail reports.
Michelle McClory, who works for Crisis as the first port-of-call for homeless people in Edinburgh and the Lothians, claimed the true rough sleeping figures are far higher.
She said: “It’s grimmer than it’s ever been. Rough sleeping is our new norm, which I never thought would happen.
“Last week, I was on outreach at a job centre and met a 57-year-old man who’s been sleeping on the streets in East Lothian for months. It’s all walks of life.
“Somebody I met recently used to be a high-level politician in another country and is now homeless. I’ve had a doctor’s secretary who was homeless, lecturers at universities who are homeless.
“The cost of living crisis is hitting all of us. It’s an absolutely outrageous market where trying to rent any sort of decent place is just completely breaking the bank. And then people who are in temporary accommodation have been left to stay there in conditions that are absolutely horrendous.
“That, again, has become a new norm. Politely, I really don’t think the politicians get it.
“I defy anyone to understand it until you’ve been on the frontline. Do politicians realise there are professionals sleeping in their car then going to work and trying to hide it from their friends and family?”
Michelle McClory, a frontline homelessness worker for Crisis Scotland(Image: Handout)
Three formerly homeless people, Cazzah and James from Edinburgh and Sarah from Glasgow, now form Crisis’ lived experience campaigners’ group. Each of the trio, in their 30s and 40s, were in work when they became homeless – and wound up stuck for years in horrible temporary digs.
Ex-banking worker Cazzah declared herself homeless in 2019 after her landlord sold up, then couldn’t secure another tenancy because she claimed disability benefits. She said the first temporary roof found for her was a hostel in the Saughton area.
But a friend then messaged her saying, “Don’t go to that one, you will not come out alive.”
Fortunately, she was able to move into her friend’s box room until more suitable accommodation was found. Sarah, who has a young son, was working in the NHS but became homeless after being granted leave to remain in the UK.
She said: “I had to leave my accommodation without any documentation, any identification, any financial help. I was panicking with my bags and stuck in limbo.
“I’m based in Glasgow so I was just moving around the city centre the whole day going from place to place with the bags, the kids, all of that. It’s when it’s rainy or windy and you don’t have anywhere to go. We’d go to the park and I’d pretend we were going for a picnic.
“I was offered emergency accommodation and some terrible experiences. There was anti-social behaviour. Some of the rooms were very unhygienic and my son got a very bad skin infection.”
Edinburgh-based James said: “When I was leaving temporary accommodation, I was noticing more people who did not come across as stereotypically homeless. Now, it is especially young people.
“The inability to get housing is causing so many problems for people that are educated and do vote. You’re storing up a huge reckoning down the line if this isn’t solved.
“It can now happen to people that, say in 2010, it wouldn’t have. Fast forward 16 years, we’re now in a really bad place.
“And if you extend that to the next 14 years, trust me, it’s not just going to be your stereotypical homeless person faced by it – this will affect everyone.”
Innes Shirreff, operations manager for Crisis in Edinburgh, added: “I would describe it as a broken system. There are things that can be done to change things quite quickly but there has to be a political will to do that and finance that backs that.”