Homelessness in Scotland: update to 30 September 2025
This statistics bulletin provides information on homelessness in Scotland in the six-month period from 1 April 2025 to 30 September 2025, alongside historical data.
Part of
Characteristics
Key Points
- Decrease in the number of people in homeless households, with a larger decrease for children than adults.
- More single male applicants; less single female parent applicants.
- Decrease in White (Scottish) main applicants.
There were 19,469 adults and 7,304 children associated with households assessed as homeless between April and September 2025. This represents a 4% decrease in adults and 14% decrease in children compared to 2024.
There have been some changes to the characteristics of homeless households compared to the previous year.
Gender, age and household type
There is a slightly higher proportion of male main applicants (59%) in 2025 compared to 2024 (57%). Increases have been experienced for males aged 18 to 34 in particular (from 26% to 29%).
Conversely, the proportion of female main applicants aged 18 to 49 decreased (from 36% to 33%).
Increase in proportion of single male households; decrease in single female parent households
Chart 3: Household type (households assessed as homeless), April to September 2024 and 2025
The proportion of households with children has decreased from 27% to 24% between 2024 and 2025. This ties in with the finding above that there is a much larger decrease in the number of children compared to adults.
Ethnicity
Decrease in proportion of White applicants, driven by White Scottish; increases for African, Caribbean or Black, Asian and Arabian
Chart 4: Ethnicity of main applicants (households assessed as homeless), 2024 and 2025
It is likely that the changes in the reporting of ethnicity are a result of the increases and decreases across eligibility categories. For example, the decrease in White ethnicities will be linked to the decrease in applications from British, EEA, EU and A8 citizens.