Earlier this month, the Courier printed an article about the concerns of some of the city's homeless people about the possible lack of bed spaces in Dundee. Following this, I have been in correspondence with the City Council's Director of Housing about the matter, and, as reported in today's Courier, the Director has given me an update on the issue. Below is the substance of her response :"As part of our statistical returns to the Scottish Government (HL1 Returns) we are required to record any applicant who claims to have slept rough on the night preceding their homelessness application and also whether they had slept rough at any time within a three month period prior to applying. Our returns for 2009 and for the first two quarters of 2010 show no rough sleepers have applied as homeless.
I appreciate that our HL Returns only record persons who apply to the City Council as homeless and also only record information as given by applicants themselves, however, our experience is that there is not a significant problem with rough sleeping in Dundee. Due to the lack of need for services to rough sleepers we diverted funding from the Cyrenians Outreach and Resettlement Team to what is now Transform's Homefinder Project. Homefinder staff still retain an outreach remit but this is mainly carried out through briefings with the Police and City Ambassadors to advise that rough sleepers be referred to the Lily Walker Centre. So far we have not had a significant number of referrals.
As the Courier article states, we have protocols in place with voluntary sector hostels in Dundee and we refer people for temporary accommodation to these agencies along with providing accommodation within our own supervised and dispersed units. It is fair to say that we still experience significant demand for temporary accommodation and where people are able to stay with friends or relatives we will advise them to do so if there is a shortage of available bed spaces at any particular time. This may account for the reference in the article to people being advised to contact on a daily basis to check on availability of temporary accommodation but where there is a crisis situation we would use Bed & Breakfast accommodation and would not have people rough sleeping.
Unfortunately there are a small group of homeless people who are barred from all hostel accommodation in the City due to behavioural problems usually associated with substance or alcohol misuse. It may be that individuals in this category have slept rough on occasion but this is not due to an overall lack of bed spaces in the City. Where an individual with these issues presented to ourselves we would accommodation within our own temporary accommodation and endeavour to engage the person with services which may help them to address the issues leading to their homelessness, assuming the health and safety of our accommodation staff was not compromised by doing so.
I would assure you that we keep temporary accommodation requirements in the City under review and at this time supply appears to be sufficient ... Our strategy is to reduce demand for temporary accommodation through focussing on prevention of homelessness work but should we find that demand for temporary accommodation increases in future we would look at increasing supply through our partnership arrangements with the voluntary sector along with reviewing our own stock of temporary accommodation."
I appreciate that our HL Returns only record persons who apply to the City Council as homeless and also only record information as given by applicants themselves, however, our experience is that there is not a significant problem with rough sleeping in Dundee. Due to the lack of need for services to rough sleepers we diverted funding from the Cyrenians Outreach and Resettlement Team to what is now Transform's Homefinder Project. Homefinder staff still retain an outreach remit but this is mainly carried out through briefings with the Police and City Ambassadors to advise that rough sleepers be referred to the Lily Walker Centre. So far we have not had a significant number of referrals.
As the Courier article states, we have protocols in place with voluntary sector hostels in Dundee and we refer people for temporary accommodation to these agencies along with providing accommodation within our own supervised and dispersed units. It is fair to say that we still experience significant demand for temporary accommodation and where people are able to stay with friends or relatives we will advise them to do so if there is a shortage of available bed spaces at any particular time. This may account for the reference in the article to people being advised to contact on a daily basis to check on availability of temporary accommodation but where there is a crisis situation we would use Bed & Breakfast accommodation and would not have people rough sleeping.
Unfortunately there are a small group of homeless people who are barred from all hostel accommodation in the City due to behavioural problems usually associated with substance or alcohol misuse. It may be that individuals in this category have slept rough on occasion but this is not due to an overall lack of bed spaces in the City. Where an individual with these issues presented to ourselves we would accommodation within our own temporary accommodation and endeavour to engage the person with services which may help them to address the issues leading to their homelessness, assuming the health and safety of our accommodation staff was not compromised by doing so.
I would assure you that we keep temporary accommodation requirements in the City under review and at this time supply appears to be sufficient ... Our strategy is to reduce demand for temporary accommodation through focussing on prevention of homelessness work but should we find that demand for temporary accommodation increases in future we would look at increasing supply through our partnership arrangements with the voluntary sector along with reviewing our own stock of temporary accommodation."
As I indicated in the Courier today, it is important that every effort is made to ensure that people without housing are assisted promptly and effectively. It is an issue I will continue to take a close eye on as ensuring that all have adequate housing is extremely important.