OFFICIAL HOMELESSNESS STATISTICS

Scotland - Trends over time

  • 40,000 households were officially recognised as newly homeless in Scotland in 2007/08.

  • Over the period from 2000/01 to 2003/04, there was a noticeable increase in the number of households officially recognised as newly homeless, from 30,000 in 1996/97 to 43,000 in 2003/04. Since then, numbers have been stable.

  • A third of newly homeless households are single person households aged 25 or over without dependent children.  A further quarter are single person households aged under 25 without dependent children and another quarter are lone parents.  Very few are couples.

  • The rise in officially recognised homelessness broadly coincided with the introduction of the 2001 Housing (Scotland) Act and the 2003 Homelessness etc. (Scotland) Act which created a recent framework which is much more generous towards homeless people without dependent children than before.

 Newly homeless in Scotland graph

Page last modified on 31/03/2009 at 17:03

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