Picture two paths: one leads to an ordinary flat, a space to call your own, no different from anyone else’s. The other to a sleeping pod, a hostel room, a homeless B&B or shelter – a separate setup designed ‘for people like you.’

For those navigating homelessness, that second path might provide shelter, but it often comes with a catch – rules, labels, and a subtle message that your choices don’t fully count and your life is not fully equal.

The first path, though? It’s mainstream housing, a key to stability, safety and a chance to decide and be who you are beyond your circumstances.

The is not only about roofs and walls. It’s about recognition, dignity, belonging and the radical idea (it sometimes feels) that no one’s life is less important.

Why does this matter?

When housing can’t be provided for everyone, as is the case in Scotland today, then the shape of ‘the next best thing’ becomes extraordinarily important. It reveals what matters and to whom.

Housing isn’t just shelter. It’s a space where life unfolds – and in our own terms. When we offer something lesser or distinct, we’re implying that not all lives deserve the same texture or possibility.

The housing and homelessness sector in Scotland is crying out for a political intervention that is inspiring, ambitious and passionate about housing in Scotland – and which wholeheartedly embraces three truths:

• First, that homelessness is a housing crisis – and the most devastating outcome of a broken housing system.
• Second, that most of us – if we want it – can thrive in an ordinary home as part of an ordinary community.
• And third, that inequality is healed through reform and redress – not by deepening divides that scar the lives of people already at the hard edges.

We have a progressive homelessness sector in Scotland which has delivered major changes to modernise its response over many years. At the heart of that is an understanding that inclusion thrives in the ordinary, framed by a modern policy of prevention and rapid rehousing into mainstream homes.

Progress has included an intentional move away from services like large-scale hostels, ‘shared air’ communal night shelters, outdoor soup kitchens. Away from any initiatives that create stigma by ringfencing people affected together. And away from any services that label or reinforce people as ‘homeless.’

But there is a risk that this direction of travel is forced to retreat by a deepening set of housing challenges that will only mask the extent of deepening exclusion.

What are the big risks?

Currently, the ‘next best thing’ on offer to many people navigating homelessness is the exact reverse of what they need, a parallel system of temporary accommodation of the type and standard that can cause frustration, fear and anxiety – and with the sting of stigma too.

That councils are paying out millions to private operators to profit from substandard temporary accommodation should concern everyone. When fundamental housing services are an opportunity for profit, we send a message: that homelessness is not only an acceptable status quo, but a market to tap into. Literally banking on exclusion, rather than investing in inclusion.

The segregation, short-termism and typecasting that goes hand in hand with these services can have long-term consequences for people’s sense of identity, value and belonging, which for many eclipses any short-term benefit. And we know that these services often become a default, not a bridge, that harden into our systems.

Congregating people in close quarters builds stress, affects health, damages relationships and forces everyone’s hand around fundamental issues like ‘risk.’ Who isn’t at risk when people are held together for long periods at the most difficult time of their lives – in casework waiting rooms, in hotel rooms and B&Bs, in outside queues for food and shelter?

How did we get here?

Scottish Government already has policies restricting the use of unsuitable temporary accommodation and has made funding available to all councils since 2019 to make transitions that will ease and accelerate routes to settled housing.

But three forces have strained local budgets and plans and driven cascading setbacks for councils tackling homelessness:

• Global factors: the pandemic and its aftermath, cost-of-living crisis, and the international displacement of people due to conflict and unrest. 
• UK-wide factors: including UK government fiscal policy, welfare benefit reforms and immigration policy and procedure.
• National factors: an accumulating housing deficit leading to the Scottish Parliament’s declaration of a housing emergency in 2024.

What needs to happen now?

In times of crisis, it has been described that we should attend both to the most affected, and the most able to be assisted.

So we need investment in real housing outcomes for people at the hardest edge.

We need to go further to ensure that housing and support services offered are not just equal to but also seek to redress the extraordinary set of challenges and disadvantages that people have faced in their lives. Housing First works by combining ordinary housing with extraordinary support. And because it says, ‘you belong here too’.

We need to mobilise the transformation of shared, supported housing for the small number of people that don’t want their own place. This needs to be jointly planned and commissioned by councils and health and social care partnerships, losing the ‘homeless’ label entirely and helping to break down other ‘care group’ silos and stigma in this provision at a local level.

The most pressured council areas also need investment in a replacement plan for unsuitable temporary accommodation so that there is no commercial profit from homelessness in Scotland. Councils, housing associations and the third sector can provide better for less but need invested in to do so.

And we need to keep working toward the ideal housing system which provides an affordable home for everyone and a tight supply of temporary accommodation to support housing transitions for households that need a safety net in in the short term.

In the platforms we create for people with experience of homelessness, the themes of belonging and being treated with respect are among the most recurring themes.

Because people experiencing homelessness aren’t a distinct, separate group with unique needs. Navigating tougher conditions than most, yes, but driving toward the same goals – agency, privacy, stability, safety.

Quick fixes may fill a gap today, but they can carve a deeper divide tomorrow, subtly shaping how we see ourselves and each other in the long run. Inclusion thrives in the ordinary – with thoughtful, inclusive action, the housing emergency can be a powerful catalyst for a fairer Scotland.

The Everyone Home Collective has set out a course of action for the Scottish Government’s Housing to 2040 Strategic Board about taking a people first approach to the housing emergency. Read it here.

GHIFT, the lived experience platform in Glasgow, had 16 conversations with people using overnight winter services. You can read more here about people’s experiences.