EXCLUSIVE: The SNP’s Susan Aitken turned down the plea by the Scottish Tenants Organisation.
Susan Aitken, leader of Glasgow City Council(Image: Garry F McHarg Daily Record)
The leader of Glasgow council has been criticised after rejecting an emergency summit on the city’s homelessness “catastrophe”. Susan Aitken said pulling together key figures across Glasgow would divert resources and staff time away from the crisis.
Recent figures show the number of homeless people living in short-term digs rose to a record 8,771 last month. The number of homeless kids in temporary accommodation also hit 3,233 in October.
An increase in applications from refugees granted leave to remain is a key factor in the surge. According to the figures, there were 5,465 refugees living in temporary accommodation in Glasgow last month.
Writing to Aitken, Sean Clerkin of the Scottish Tenants Organisation urged her to convene a special summit in a bid to secure more government funding for Glasgow: “We should be getting together at an emergency winter summit on homelessness before the winter sets in to stop more homeless deaths from happening as they surely will if more resources are not given to Glasgow treating it as a special case.
“The metrics on homelessness in Glasgow are disastrous and therefore we need to have this summit before it is too late. The homelessness catastrophe has happened on your watch and if you fail to hold such a summit it will reflect badly on your legacy.”
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Aitken responded by saying the council had declared a homelessness emergency in 2023 and flagged up the housing plan already in place. The SNP politician also said two city wide meetings had occurred as part of a “multi-agency response”.
She wrote: “Given the scale of current activity and the engagement already in place, we do not believe that convening an additional summit would add value at this stage.
“In fact, it would risk diverting resources and staff time away from delivering the actions that are already underway to protect vulnerable individuals during the winter period.”
Clerkin told the Record: “This refusal to hold an emergency winter homeless summit in Glasgow will sentence more homeless people to penury, destitution and death. It is a blatant disregard for homeless men women and children normalising their suffering this winter and its aftermath.
“It is a missed opportunity where Glaswegians could have pressurised the Home Office and the Scottish Government to make Glasgow a special case for funding which could have helped house all homeless people in the city.”
(Image: DAILY RECORD)
City chiefs blame the Home Office policy of trying to close asylum seeker hotels for the surge in refugee homelessness applications.
But critics of the SNP Government say laws under the control of Holyrood are making the situation worse.
The law allows refugees granted leave to remain in other parts of the UK the right to declare themselves homeless in Scotland.
Glasgow council received 7,574 homeless applications from outside the city between April 2023 and September this year.
The bulk of these applications, 5,620, were from other parts of the UK outside Scotland.
Greater London was the area responsible for the highest number of applications to Glasgow – 418.
Aitken said: “We are already working closely with stakeholders and lobbying both governments, hard, for resources and support to address homelessness and the housing emergency.
“The Scottish Government has responded with some resources for housebuilding and acquisitions – but we continue to make the case for more.
“The UK Government, meanwhile, has yet to take on board any of our concerns about the rate at which the Home Office is forcing refugees with leave to remain into homelessness in cities across the UK.
“But let’s be clear, we don’t need a summit to be heard by the Scottish Government – and there is less than no chance that Ministers in London would show their faces.”