The City of Edinburgh Council has agreed to begin moving homeless out of previously allocated accommodations after finding they are unlawful Houses in Multiple Occupation (HMO).
Previous warnings by lawyers that the council was committing a criminal offense by violating health and safety requirements propelled the action forward.
In a meeting held on Wednesday 13 November, the Housing, Homelessness and Fair Work Committee outlined a crisis plan to move as many as 700 people.
Part of the plan includes moving those in the HMOs into lawful accommodation by the beginning of December and stopping additional allocations until the start of January.
At the meeting, chair of the Strategic Homeless Action Partnership in Edinburgh (SHAPE), Ewan Aitken, called involuntary movement at such a rapid pace “harmful”.
“You either have people ending up back on the streets or you will be in tenancies that are actually less viable and much more difficult to support, which means they’re actually more likely to break down and much more likely to be re-traumatized by that experience,” he stated.
One of the properties seeing a suspension of council funding is the Haymarket Hub Hotel, which hosts a homeless center within it.
Alasdair Bennett, the Chief Executive of the Bethany Christian Trust – a charity which aims to end homelessness in Scotland – urged the council to “continue purchasing beds”, especially “throughout the winter”.
City councillors expressed similar concerns, while leader of the SNP group cllr. Simita Kumar scrutinized the lack of action previously taken, saying:
“We knew about this issue for a very long time, we should not be at a crisis point today”.
“My ask with this committee is why did we not act fully when we had sufficient time?,” she continued.
“We should not be in a position where we are decanting 700 people in a moment’s notice”.
Photo by Talha Imam on Unsplash
