West Dunbartonshire has the highest rate of homelessness in the country, it has been revealed, as councillors dedicate £500,000 to tackle the issue.
As it stands there are 1404 people per 100,000 suffering from homelessness, in West Dunbartonshire, which includes sofa surfing as well as rough sleeping, compared to the Scottish average of 632 per 100,000.
The problem was highlighted during the housing and communities committee on Wednesday morning as members came to discuss the next stages of their “Homes at the Heart” project - designed to meet the objectives of the Scottish Government’s Rapid Rehousing programme.
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While aiming to prevent and eradicate homelessness, the project aims to enable service users with low or no support needs to access settled housing quickly, develop interim housing options which enable independent living and tenancy sustainment; and implement a Housing First model which enables the most excluded service users to achieve permanent housing.
Now in its fourth year, money left over from the programme in year three will be used in the coming months meaning a total of £474,392 will help reduce the amount of time spent in temporary accommodation to 15 weeks.
In July this year, there were 72 households who had spent over a year in temporary accommodation, an increase from 53 in August 2021.
During the meeting, leader of the council, councillor Martin Rooney, said: “Obviously homelessness is a very big issue, particularly in West Dunbartonshire where we have been identified as having the worst homelessness in all of Scotland.
“The Scottish average is 632 per 100,000 people and in West Dunbartonshire it’s 1404 per 100,000. The nearest to us is Glasgow City which is 1065 per 100,000 people.
“So we have a huge issue. We need to focus on homelessness as much as we can to try and make sure that we get those numbers down to the Scottish average.
“Otherwise it is a good report we have in front of us, but we do need to recognise the scale of the homelessness that we face in West Dunbartonshire.”
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