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Leah Gunn Barrett

This was published in the January 4th, 2024 Edinburgh Evening News. The last two lines, calling on Scotland to end the failing union, were edited out. Only by restoring Scottish sovereignty can we end homelessness and poverty.

Child homelessness has hit an all-time high in the failing UK. 1 in 84 children don’t have a home and many are forced to stay in freezing shipping containers, overcrowded B&Bs and unsecured premises without locks.  Shelter reported that the number of homeless in England rose 14% last year.

One in ten of England’s largest councils are nearing bankruptcy due to inflation, inadequate central government funding, and more children being taken into care. They’re spending between a fifth and half their available resources to cope with the crisis because of soaring private rents and not enough social housing.Those local authorities who have sold off their council houses are in worse shape because they have no Housing Revenue Account (HRA) to tap into. Those with HRAs are eating into their reserves in order to buy properties for homeless families. 

Despite the financial constraints London has imposed on its Scottish colony, Scotland has done more to alleviate homelessness than the rest of the UK. Scotland’s core homelessness rate is half that of England’s.The Scottish Government increased the supply of social housing and ended the priority need test a decade ago to reduce rough sleeping. It published the UK’s first homelessness action plan and quickly rehoused the homeless into safe and settled accommodation. 

But Scotland needs to do more than mitigate the impacts of UK austerity, rooted in an ideology that opposes the State in any form because it sees it as crowding out opportunities for private profiteering. It needs control over its substantial resources, the ability to create money via its central bank and to invest in its People. It needs to end the union.