It’s no surprise that the very word ‘emergency’ may drive courses of action that would previously have seemed exceptional or even extreme.

And it may be frowned upon for anyone to question such an action, especially if it has the primary aim of housing more homeless households. Just to be clear, this is absolutely not a criticism of the City of Edinburgh Council or any other social landlord who may choose to follow suit – every landlord faces its own challenges and must do whatever it sees fit within the law.

My worry here is that actions taken by one landlord can create a bandwagon effect where others feel pressured to follow. Whilst I don’t think the Scottish Government will intervene in how social landlords let their homes, I’m nervous that with the Election only a year away, some political parties may see it as a flagship manifesto policy to pledge a ‘100% lets to homeless’ approach (notwithstanding that it probably wouldn’t be seen as a vote winner).

There’s also the concern that actions taken in exceptional circumstances and described as being temporary may end up being in place a lot longer than originally envisaged – after all, who thinks the housing emergency will be sorted any time soon? We certainly won’t be seeing a big increase in new housing supply if current policies continue.

A key motivation for the action is to protect children and help get them out of inappropriate temporary accommodation. Hard to argue with that. But don’t dismiss the adverse effect it’ll have on children and families in totally unsuitable or unaffordable housing and high on housing lists: in many cases there’s a pretty fine line between the circumstances of people on the list and those applying as homeless. Are we really going to make homelessness the default route into social housing?

Worryingly for me, Homeless Network Scotland, responding to Edinburgh’s announcement, called for ‘at least the period of the housing emergency, a significant increase in the allocation of all available housing to households who are homeless needs mandated by Scottish Government … this needs to go beyond current convention and apply to the development of new builds and to the acquisition and allocation of existing homes.’

Council housing departments and housing associations need to be left to allocate homes sensitively and proportionately as they see fit, within the law of course. As community based housing associations, our members have played an instrumental role, in partnership with local authorities, in regenerating communities faced with multiple deprivation, and a key element of this has been trying to achieve a reasonable balance between lets through the housing list, homelessness lets and transfers of existing tenants where this makes best use of stock.

Take, for example, the letting of a new build development. I doubt you’d find many housing managers who believe that allocating an entire new build to homeless households is sustainable, either in terms of the concentration of single male households or the potential implications for support services (recognising that not everyone needs support). 

Across Scotland associations are, rightly, making a greater proportion of homelessness lets than ever before. In Glasgow, the figure’s now in excess of 50% - more than double what it was a few years ago, on top of homes leased to the Council for use as temporary accommodation. Realistically, this isn’t going to change in the foreseeable future, and associations generally accept this new world. Glasgow could ask for 100% of our lets, but knows that this, again, is just not sustainable.

Over the years, Scotland has chosen to adopt homelessness legislation which is far more liberal than elsewhere in the UK, but – perhaps predictably – the resources haven’t kept pace. And from some politicians – not least those whose party will never be in power – there are currently calls for even stronger homelessness rights through ditching the intentionality provisions. We need to stop legislating and focus on boosting supply.

Losing any sense of balance or proportionality in how we let our homes would have a profound impact on tenants and on how social housing is managed. We must at least be open about the practical effect of our actions so that decisions taken ‘just while there’s an emergency’ don’t come back to haunt us long into the future.