Glasgow City Council faces an £84 million bill for temporary B&B homeless accommodation, a situation described as a calamity for the city.
Council tax payers in Glasgow are effectively being punished for a problem that the city has not created. Glasgow has been hit with an influx of asylum seekers given leave to remain in the UK, coming here because of Scotland’s more liberal homeless laws, which give every person who comes here a place on the housing waiting list.
This has happened during a housing emergency, with social rented accommodation simply not available for the thousands that need it. This is a damning indictment of a fundamentally broken housing market.
How did Scotland’s largest city reach this point?
The answer is simple: we have stopped building the homes people actually need, for sale and rent. For years, overall housebuilding has lagged far behind demand, leaving private rents spiralling out of reach while waiting lists stretch into eternity.
When genuinely affordable council and housing association properties are hard to find, families hit by sudden rent hikes, evictions, or financial shocks have nowhere else to turn. B&Bs were meant to be a brief last resort for a few nights. Instead, chronic supply shortages have turned them into an indefinite, soul-crushing permanent reality.
As bitter winter weather sets in, Glasgow has no alternative but to house people in B&Bs. But the £84 million bill should not be borne by Glasgow’s council tax payers.
Who should pay the bill?
The UK Home Office has to take a share of the blame for the cack-handed way they have dealt with housing asylum seekers and those given leave to remain in the UK. So the UK Government needs to stump up cash to help.
The Scottish Government must also share responsibility. Their liberal housing laws have made Glasgow a magnet for asylum seekers given leave to remain, so they need to help Glasgow pick up the bill.
Glasgow Council cannot simply budget its way out of a national structural failure while carrying a disproportionate share of the country’s homelessness pressures alone. Frontline services are stretched to breaking point, and vulnerable residents cannot afford to wait years for new bricks and mortar while freezing temperatures bite.
What needs to happen next
There needs to be emergency capital funding made available to Glasgow to acquire empty properties, convert unused commercial spaces, and bring void social homes back into use at speed. In the longer term, Scotland needs sustained investment to kickstart social housebuilding on a scale not seen in decades.
We need to get families out of hotel rooms and into real homes.
