The Scottish government has awarded £945,000 to projects helping to prevent homelessness. This will help them continue until the end of this financial year.
The Homelessness Prevention Pilots test approaches to early intervention and prevention.
The funding will help organisations deliver ‘ask and act’ measures. These are new duties proposed in the Housing (Scotland) Bill that require public bodies to ask about a person’s housing situation early and take action to prevent homelessness before it happens.
The extra funding is in addition to £4 million announced for the pilots in August last year. The extension will help maintain prevention capacity while final evaluation findings are completed and considered.
Social Justice and Housing Secretary Shirley-Anne Somerville visited an ‘ask and act’ pilot project in Edinburgh’s Wester Hailes. She said: "Preventing homelessness before it happens is one of the most important steps we can take to improve people's lives.
"The work being carried out through these pilots is helping us understand how services can work together to identify risk earlier, intervene sooner and provide the support people need to stay in their homes and that is why I am pleased to confirm funding to extend them until March.
"This extension will ensure that valuable learning continues, that specialist expertise is retained, and that partners are supported as we prepare for the implementation of Scotland's new homelessness prevention duties.
“Our aim is clear: to shift from managing homelessness crises to preventing them in the first place. We are investing more than £213 million this year - partly through the local government settlement - on homelessness measures aimed at delivering better outcomes for individuals, families and communities across Scotland.
“We have a shared ambition with Crisis to end homelessness, it is helpful to see the Changing Course report it has published today, which estimates the costs and the benefits of our new homelessness prevention duties.”
Maeve McGoldrick, Head of Policy at Crisis Scotland said: “Crisis Scotland genuinely welcomes today’s announcement as a strong message that preventing homelessness is a top priority for government. The prevention pilots show what is possible when services step in early, and from our frontline experience in Wester Hailes we have seen people keep their home when they would otherwise have been pushed towards homelessness.
“Extending the funding for the next few months provides much needed continuity to all services involved in this innovative work. Importantly, it also allows time to plan for the important next stage: scaling up the learning and best practice across Scotland, in time for national commencement in 2028.”
