The Scottish Federation of Housing Associations (SFHA) said it was “simply intolerable” that ever-growing numbers of children were growing up without a stable home, warning the crisis extends far beyond housing itself.

SFHA chief executive Richard Meade said a lack of stable housing was undermining children’s education, health and life chances, and accused the Scottish Government of falling “significantly behind” its target of delivering 110,000 affordable homes by 2032.

He called for urgent action to ramp up building to the roughly 15,700 affordable homes a year he said were needed to meet the scale of the emergency, warning that delay would only push more families into temporary accommodation at growing cost to public services.

Homeless Network Scotland was similarly critical. Head of policy and impact Matt Hamill said the figures painted “a stark picture of a homelessness crisis that risks becoming the new normal,” a year on from the launch of the Scottish Government’s Housing Emergency Action Plan.

Hamill said Scotland’s strong legal rights around homelessness were “not translating into protections on the ground,” pointing to almost 21,800 cases in which people were not offered temporary accommodation at all despite a legal duty to do so. He called for a shift toward preventative approaches and a major scale-up of Housing First, a programme he said currently meets only around 10% of demand.

For Shelter Scotland, the figures show the sheer scale of Scotland’s broken housing system - the result of decades of underinvestment and the failure to build enough social homes.

The housing and homelessness charity says that the situation can be turned around, but only if building more social homes becomes a national mission supported by an exceptional level of funding. Areas that need it most, like Glasgow, must receive national investment from Scottish and UK governments.

Gordon Llewellyn-MacRae, interim director at Shelter Scotland, said: “Scotland’s housing emergency has been decades in the making. Children are growing up in harmful conditions and families don’t know how long they will be stuck in limbo. Local authorities are under extreme pressure and are unlawfully turning people away who have a right to housing.

“That pressure is resulting in housing being weaponised with calls to roll back rights. It is utterly unacceptable.

“We know why it has happened- because we have failed to build enough social homes. The First Minister’s recent pledge to stop children being placed in harmful temporary accommodation is very welcome, showing he has listened to the demands of families. But we won’t celebrate just yet – promises mean nothing without action.

“The situation in Glasgow needs a national response. It needs investment from the Scottish and UK Governments until the asylum backlog declines and we must see the delivery of homes quicker to lift people - especially children - out of temporary accommodation.

“The good news is we know how to end the housing emergency and so do the Government. We need committed investment to deliver the social homes desperately and urgently needed. If the Government focuses More Homes Scotland on social housing, there’s a massive opportunity to change the trajectory. Families can’t wait any longer. It’s time to turn the tide and follow through with action, so we don’t allow more children to face the same fate for the next decade.”

Janet Haugh, CEO of Right There, described the figures as “shocking”.

“More than 10,700 children are now growing up in temporary accommodation across Scotland, while rough sleeping continues to rise,” Haugh added.

“Scotland cannot keep describing this as a housing emergency without responding like it is one. We need action, not platitudes. Prevention, affordable housing and early support must move from ambition to action.”

The statistics, published by the Scottish Government on 22 September 2026 and covering the 2025-26 year, show:

• 41,443 homelessness applications were made — roughly flat on the previous year.
• 35,002 households were assessed as homeless or threatened with homelessness, up 1% on 2024-25.
• 19,004 households were in temporary accommodation as of 31 March 2026 — the highest figure in the series, up 10% year-on-year.
• 10,715 children were living in temporary accommodation as of 31 March 2026 — also a series high, up 5% on the previous year.
• Rough sleeping the night before application rose from 2,464 to 2,949 cases; rough sleeping in the three months prior rose from 3,579 to 4,115.
• Households spent an average of 237 days in temporary accommodation in closed cases during 2025-26, three days fewer than the previous year, though open cases averaged 325 days.
• 83% of households assessed as unintentionally homeless secured settled accommodation, unchanged from 2024-25.

It is the first annual homelessness release since the government launched its Housing Emergency Action Plan just over a year ago, data that campaigners say shows the situation “getting worse across the board.”

Cabinet secretary for social justice and housing Shirley-Anne Somerville acknowledged the figures “remain far too high” but pointed to government action including a £50 million Homelessness Prevention Fund, a £2m Fund to Leave scheme for abuse survivors, and 1,500 Housing First tenancies. She also cited a further £2m investment in Social Bite’s homelessness work.

Somerville said the government would continue “shifting our approach from crisis management to prevention and rapid rehousing,” and highlighted £4.9 billion earmarked for affordable homes over the next four years, building on what she said were 146,000 affordable homes delivered since 2007. She added that Scotland’s affordable housing supply per head had, on average, outpaced both England and Wales over that period.

She also called on the UK Government to scrap the freeze on Local Housing Allowance in its forthcoming budget and provide councils with further funding, arguing that Home Office policy failures were compounding pressure on local authorities.