Supported Housing Task and Finish Group Main Report
This sub-group of the Homelessness Prevention and Strategy Group was set up to consider the future role of supported housing for people who are homeless or at risk of homelessness. This report makes 14 recommendations.
Foreword
When guidance for local authorities to develop Rapid Rehousing Transition Plans was developed by a short-life and Scottish Government appointed action group in 2018, they placed a bookmark at the role that supported housing should play in this new policy context.
A new policy context was being built from the irrefutable evidence that most of us, with the right support if we want it, can build and live our lives in an ordinary home as part of an ordinary community. But it was also recognised that not everyone is able to sustain an ordinary home - and not everyone wants one.
So when the Homelessness Prevention and Strategy Group appointed a cluster of groups to do a deep dive on the big questions, it provided the ideal opportunity for the homelessness sector to return to this bookmark and write the next chapter. The task of this group was to undertake the analysis that can able us to chart a course that brings supported housing more confidently into the range of housing options and in a way that maximises people’s choice and control.
The group’s position is that supported housing should offer a settled, not temporary, housing option for the small number of people who don’t want or haven’t kept mainstream housing. It should maximise security of tenure. It should be jointly planned and commissioned by councils and Health and Social Care Partnerships, breaking the legacy of ‘homeless’ supported accommodation altogether. It should offer self-contained homes with easy access to great support on-site or nearby. And it should have adequate funding models to mitigate the ‘benefit trap’ created by high rents that limit people and their potential to earn or learn.
This report enters an exceptionally challenging environment. The optimism of the period that set in motion this work has been displaced by post-covid social and economic impact, a national housing emergency, cost-of-living crisis, huge pressure on public finances and rising homelessness with some areas experiencing systemic failure in their homelessness services.
But this is a report for a sector positioned to act on homelessness. Evidence-led action is the most effective action. And so by moving in the direction outlined in this report, we can make progress on homelessness and contribute to creating more settled housing options and lives.
Chairs of the Supported Housing Task and Finish Group:
Maggie Brunjes, chief executive of Homeless Network Scotland
Eileen McMullan, policy lead at Scottish Federation of Housing Associations