Scotland has an ambitious plan to end homelessness. Local authorities in Scotland have a statutory duty to secure settled accommodation for homeless households. As a result, people who are at risk of becoming homeless in the near future or have become homeless can approach their council where they can get assessed for housing assistance in either the private or social rental market.

LGBT people are notably absent from the list of vulnerable subpopulations recognised by the Scottish Government. This is true even though an earlier draft of this plan published in 2018 recognised LGBT people as a legislative priority: “There is a legal duty for us to consider equality issues as we develop new policy and in particular the impact of the policy on people who share certain ‘protected characteristics’: age, disability, sex, gender reassignment, sexual orientation, race and religion or belief”

Urban Sociologist Garrett Grainger mentions a potential reason for this neglect might be the lack of research on LGBT homelessness in Scotland. The national government and most service providers do not collect standardised data on LGBT homelessness in Scotland. Available estimates of LGBT homelessness in Scotland consequently come from UK-wide surveys. Fraser et al. (2019) estimates 25% of homeless persons in the UK are LGBT despite composing only 5% of the total population.

The full blog can be found on the CaCHE'S webpage

Garrett Grainger biography 

First published: 13 June 2023

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