The Scotland Homeless Act:  A Model for All

Summary

The Homeless Etc. (Scotland) Act of 2003 brought Scotland into the forefront of countries recognizing a right to housing and taking affirmative measures to prevent and address homelessness. This law creates an immediate right to placement in temporary housing with the assumption that people will be moved within a year to permanent housing. Mental health, employment, and other support services are integrated into housing placements to ensure a successful transition to secure housing.

History

The Homeless Act is the result of an ongoing effort by the Scottish Executive to create a comprehensive approach to homelessness in Scotland. The Executive established a Homelessness Task Force in 1999, composed of the Ministers for Social Justice and a wide array of national and city-based housing and homeless organizations. The recommendations of this task force were progressively adopted into legislation, based on the Housing 1987 Act, and updated with the Housing 2001 Act. A Homeless Monitoring Group was set up to monitor implementation of the law and assist in further revisions. References to "the Act" below mean the 2003 Act plus the previous legislation it amended.

Elements of the Law

The Act creates a right to temporary accommodation for homeless people, which for most individuals will transition into a permanent housing solution. Local authorities are required to secure that the accommodation made available for "priority" groups qualifies as permanent accommodation (e.g. no long shelter stays). The priority groups (including domestic violence survivors, disabled people, released prisoners, and children) are to be phased out by 2012, resulting in a right to housing for all homeless people.

The Act requires that temporary housing be given immediately after an assessment of homelessness has been made, prior to the investigation of the elements of homelessness (priority need, intentionality, and local connection). Additionally, whereas before housing authorities were required to investigate the "intentionality" of homelessness, the new law makes this optional, likely reducing the number of cases investigated unnecessarily. Also, the local connection test is suspended altogether. The duty on the state to provide accommodation continues even if the individual temporarily finds other short-term accommodation; only when permanent accommodation is secured does the duty end.

Placement into housing is combined with a right to supportive services necessary to allow an individual to maintain housing. The law makes explicit that higher short--term costs will be offset as people exit homelessness more permanently. Additionally, families with children must be placed in housing appropriate for the entire family - not separated, as is common in many U.S. jurisdictions.

Accommodation can be made either in public housing, or through a Registered Social Landlord (RSL). The RSL is a non-profit corporation registered with the state for provision of housing. Many localities are phasing out public housing altogether in favor of RSLs. Importantly, the Act ensures that RSLs have a duty to accept and place homeless individuals referred by the state into appropriate housing (appropriate includes family accommodations, disability, etc.) The Act also requires localities to create local action plans, and then seeks to assist in the implementation of those plans. The fundamental guiding principle is that accommodating homeless people appropriately, with identified and relevant levels of support and without restriction or hurdles, will increase the likelihood of success in preventing and alleviating homelessness in the longer term.

To prevent homelessness, the Act restricts landlords' ability to evict tenants when rent arrears are due to a delay in payment of public housing benefits. Landlords must also notify local housing authorities when they are proceeding for eviction, to enable authorities to focus resources on those threatened with eviction and to allow for continuous care in the event of the eviction. The Act is combined with a number of other policy initiatives, such as the 2001 Mortgage Rights law that allows individuals in danger of foreclosure to sell their house to a RSL. The RSL then rents the property back to the owners, thus preventing homelessness for residents, maintaining their community connections, decreasing the burden on the state, and decreasing the loss to the

lender, who would otherwise have to auction the property at a loss.

Results

Since the law has come into effect, Scotland has seen a significant rise in the number of applications for housing accommodation - but rather than trying to weed people off the roles, the government actually perceives this increase in applications as a success of the law in reaching the previously "invisible" homeless. The concern lies in the possibility that the increase is also due to lack of affordable housing - and the Monitoring Group overseeing the implementation of the law has made this a priority area for research in the coming year.

Hope for the U.S.?

Philip Mangano, Chair of the Inter-Agency Council on Homelessness commented on the plan:

Scotland has a great mission to end homelessness by 2012. We share a similar vision and we base it on the notion of abolishing a social wrong, a social evil. If you look at the initiatives in Scotland and in the United States, there are great similarities, such as on the priority of partnership and increased resources from central government. The strategies that are being developed in Scotland are aimed to accomplish certain results within a specific time frame, moving away from managing homelessness to ending it. What we've come to realize in the last 20 years is that no one level of government and no one element of the private sector can do this alone. This is a national problem with local solutions.

For more information contact Eric Tars, Human Rights Staff Attorney at NLCHP at Etars@nlchp.org.