More than 36,000 applications for homelessness assistance were made to local authorities between April 2018 and March 2019, rising 3% on the previous year, according to the latest National and Official Statistics Publication for Scotland.

Throughout 2018/19, 8% (2,876) of homeless applicants reported they had slept rough at least once in the last 3 months before making their application. As a proportion of all applications, this remained the same as 2017/18, however the number of applicants reporting sleeping rough in the last 3 months has risen by 8% (201).

The annual increase in homelessness applications follows a slight increase last year and eight consecutive annual decreases seen in the preceding years. The fall in homelessness applications (from a peak of 60,298 in 2005/06 to 34,726 in 2016/17) is likely to be due to the impact of housing options and homelessness prevention strategies adopted by most local authorities over the past few years rather than to changes in the underlying drivers of homelessness. The rate of reduction in homelessness applications has significantly slowed over most recent years, with a 1% increase being seen last year and a 3% increase in the latest year. This suggests that, in its current form, the impact of housing options work is unlikely to lead to further reductions in applications beyond those already seen.

Key Points of the latest homelessness statistics, include:

Applications

• Applications rose by 892 (3%) to 36,465 in 2018/19. This is the second year applications have risen following a period of consistent decline since 2005/06.

• The number of applicants who experienced rough sleeping at least once during the last 3 months before their application increased by 201 (8%) to 2,876, compared to the previous year.

• The most common reason cited as the main reason for making a homelessness application was being 'Asked to leave' their previous accommodation, which accounted for 25% of applications. The second most common reason was 'Dispute within the household / relationship breakdown: non-violent' (18%), followed by 'Dispute within the household: violent or abusive' (13%).

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• 67% of applicants gave additional reasons for failing to maintain accommodation. Of these, 'Not to do with applicant household (e.g. landlord selling property, fire, circumstances of other persons sharing previous property, harassment by others, etc)', remains the most common additional reason for failing to maintain accommodation, with 44% of people answering this question giving this as a reason. 25% of applicants gave 'Mental health reasons' as an additional reason, while 23% cited 'Lack of support from friends / family'.

Assessments

• 29,894 applications were assessed as homeless or threatened with homelessness, a rise of 523 (2%) on 2017/18. This represents 82% of the 36,392 assessments made in 2018/19.

• 1,744 of those assessed as homeless or threatened with homelessness were assessed as repeated homeless. This was 5.8% of those assessed, a proportion that has fallen from a 7.0% in 2014/15.

Temporary accommodation

• There were 10,989 households in temporary accommodation as at 31 March 2019, an increase of 56 households (+0.5%) since last year.

• Of these households in temporary accommodation, 3,315 had children or a pregnant women – an increase of 65 households (+2%) compared with one year earlier.

• The number of children in temporary accommodation increased by 180 children (+3%), to 6,795 compared with the same date one year ago.

• Between 1 April 2018 and 31st March 2019 (based on temporary accommodation placement cases closed during this period), there were 620 placements involving a breach of the Homeless Persons (Unsuitable Accommodation Order) (Scotland). Most of these were in Edinburgh (465 breaches).

• During 2018/19, there were 3,535 cases where homeless applicants were not offered temporary accommodation, an increase of 320 (10%) on the previous year. 3,365 of these cases (95%) were in Glasgow.

Outcomes

• 71% of those assessed as unintentionally homeless or threatened with homelessness secured settled accommodation. This proportion has risen consistently from 48% in 2002/03.

Key Points, covering the Housing Options publication:

Approaches

• In the last year (1 April 2018 to 31 March 2019), there were 42,850 approaches recorded. Compared with the same period one year ago, there has been a reduction of 2,995 approaches across Scotland (-7%).

• At 31 March 2019, 19,310 approaches remained open. This equates to 7% of all approaches recorded since 1 April 2014.

• Despite the overall reduction in Housing Options approaches when comparing 2018/19 with 2017/18, the proportion of approaches made for homelessness type reasons (59%) versus prevention type reasons (41%) has fallen across these two years. In 2017/18 61% of approaches were for homelessness type reasons.

Activities

The most common type of activity was to provide general housing advice and tenancy rights advice - this accounted for 37% of all activities during 2018/19. Informing clients of their rights under the homelessness legislation accounted for 28% of all activities.

Outcomes

For approaches closed during the 2018/19 financial year:

• 50% of approaches made a homelessness application.

• 22% remained in their current accommodation.

• 13% had an unknown outcome or contact was lost.

• 15% found alternative accommodation, including a social rented tenancy (5%), a private rented tenancy (2%) and moving in with family and friends (2%). Other known outcomes accounted for a further 6%.

There is considerable variation in the mix of outcomes by Local Authority area, reflecting the locally developed nature of Housing Options policies.