Numbers of people registered homeless and people with a drug dependency: FOI release

Information requested

You asked for:

The number of people in Scotland registered homeless at September 2019.
The number of people in Scotland registered homeless at September 2020.
The number of people in Scotland with a drug dependency at September 2019.
The number of people in Scotland with a drug dependency at September 2020.

Response

The answer to your questions are as follows:

Homelessness data is collected and published on an annual basis. The most recent statistics published on 27 August 2020 presents information on the period from 1 April 2019 to 31 March 2020.

As such, we cannot provide you with data on the number of people in Scotland registered homeless at September 2020 at this time. However, data for 2019-20 is publicly available and can be accessed at https://www.gov.scot/news/homelessness-statistics-1/.

In relation to the number of people in Scotland registered as homeless at September 2019, there were 22,738 live applications at 30 September 2019. The number of people attached to these applications were 39,175.

The Scottish Government commissions Information Services Division (now Public Health Scotland) to provide prevalence estimates for problem drug use in Scotland every four years. The most recent report was published in March 2019 and covers the period 2015/16 to 2018/19. It estimated that there were 57,300 people with problem drug use in Scotland. Further information is available at https://www.isdscotland.org/Health-Topics/Drugs-and-Alcohol-Misuse/Publications/2019-03-05/2019-03-05-Drug-Prevalence-2015-16-Report.pdf.

Data for the number of people in Scotland with a drug dependency at September 2020 will be included in the report due for publication in 2023.

About FOI
The Scottish Government is committed to publishing all information released in response to Freedom of Information requests. View all FOI responses at http://www.gov.scot/foi-responses.