Back in the 1980s, I remember being shocked when homelessness rose from 15,000 to 18,000. There was a law against it … ie the Homeless Persons Act … and still the numbers rose.

The number of homeless households is nearly double now, and there are even more laws against it. Homeless people arguably have more rights in Scotland than anywhere else, but the total keeps on rising.

What happens when you break the law? You get the jail, or fined, or community service.

We’re hardly going to jail housing officers and they’re already doing community service… that’s their job! I guess we could fine local councils for not providing enough houses for homeless people, but really?

If the Housing Bill goes through as proposed, a wide range of bodies, including healthcare workers, will have a legal duty to “ask” people who might be threatened with homelessness, and “act” to prevent that happening. “Ask and Act” is a very good idea, snappily expressed and entirely sensible.

In practice, the meaning of the words “threatened with homelessness” will need a clear definition. Everyone on the front line of the services covered by the Bill will need to know what it means and how to respond. New public facing staff will need trained on their very first day at work.

What happens if a service fails in its duty? One MSP asked in Committee if there was a “stick to beat them with”. The Scottish Housing Regulator already has quite a big stick; do the Scottish Social Services Council or the Care Inspectorate or local health boards have anything similar? And is this really the way we want to do things?

On the Scottish Housing News Podcast, Kieran Findlay and I talk to John Mills from the Association of Local Authority Chief Housing Officers (ALACHO), Susie Fitton from the Scottish Federation of Housing Associations (SFHA) and Maeve McGoldrick from Crisis. They all seem pleased that the Bill, once enacted, won’t be implemented until there has been time to produce more guidance, add detail in regulations and train everyone up. Effectively, that means after the next Holyrood election.

John welcomes the new duties but points out that hitting local authorities with financial penalties would be counterproductive when budgets are already overstretched and some cannot meet their legal duties.

Susie does not pretend that Ask and Act will solve the housing emergency, and wants many more mid-market and social rented houses. Exempting MMR from the new rent control regime would make sense, she says… local housing allowance and broad rental market areas already impose controls on MMR.

And Maeve says that Ask and Act will work if we can all develop the right culture, where people see the relevance to the effectiveness of their own organisations of preventing homelessness.

Someone said that if you keep doing the same thing, you tend to get the same result. There is no point in outlawing poverty, or setting legally binding targets on climate change, or forcing councils to house homeless people if you don’t provide the money, training and support to make these things possible. I guess we can’t blame MSPs for passing laws, it’s what they do; but let’s not go beating local authorities and housing associations with sticks to make them do their jobs.

Jimmy Black is a City Councillor in Dundee and, until recently, chaired an RSL. He writes in a personal capacity.

The Scottish Housing News Podcast is co-hosted by Kieran Findlay and Jimmy Black. All episodes are available here as well as on the following platforms:

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