"With 16,000 young people homeless each year, Housing Bill opportunities must be grabbed", SCSH tells housing professionals.

The Youth Unit of the Scottish Council for Single Homeless will tomorrow call on housing departments to develop youth housing strategies to tackle the scandal of youth homelessness. Addressing delegates of Scotland premier housing event, the Annual Conference of the Chartered Institute of Housing, SCSH’s Youth Unit will call on housing professionals to work in partnership with social work and education departments as well as the voluntary sector.

John Dickie, Head of SCSH’s Youth Housing Strategy Unit says: ‘The difficulties young people have accessing and sustaining a home are rarely just housing problems. For young people in housing crisis relationships may have been fractured, the normal networks of support eroded, jobs lost, education disrupted and at worst serious health problems, both mental and physical, may be apparent. Difficulties with drug and alcohol use, offending, coming to terms with rejection, violence and abuse are all strongly associated with the homeless experience. Clearly Housing departments and professionals are not in a position to meet this range of need themselves"

The proposed Housing Bill duty to develop corporate homelessness strategies recognises this. The challenge for housing workers is to build relationships with the other agencies so that we go beyond discharging statutory housing obligations and actually start to meet the whole needs of young people at risk of homelessness. Only then will we see a reduction in the scandalous numbers of young people experiencing homelessness"

Notes

• According to Scottish Executive Statistical Bulletin HSG/2000/5, of the 45700 households applying to local authorities as homeless, 35% were aged under 25. Furthermore the Executives Rough Sleeper Initiative Interim Evaluation found 42% of RSI service users were under 25.
• For those young people who are housed research shows up to 70% of tenancies allocated to young people breaking down within six months.
• Further information from SCSH.
• The Chartered Institute of Housing in Scotland ’s Conference ‘Act Together’ is being held in the Caird Hall, Dundee , from 13 to 16 March 2001 .
• The Youth Unit of Scottish Council for Single Homeless has been established with funding from the Executive to encourage and support the development of Youth Housing Strategies across Scotland .
• SCSH is the national membership organisation for individuals and organisations working with homeless people.