Scotland must not return to the use of harmful shelters

The personal accounts are harrowing. One participant described his experience at an Edinburgh shelter where he was given a yoga mat and an itchy blanket, surrounded by individuals injecting legal highs and sharing needles during an HIV outbreak.

Other testimony highlights the safety concerns for women, noting that many would rather sleep rough or take other risks than enter shelter accommodation.

These are not isolated experiences. Rather than providing safe havens, communal shelters often perpetuate harm. Our research found that shelters can result in worse health outcomes than receiving no support at all, while the rules and curfews limit freedom and dignity. Critically, there is no evidence that shelters provide a pathway to permanent housing.

“Strong legal rights to settled housing for homeless households and a substantial social housing sector created the conditions for change in Scotland”

Scotland’s success in closing shelters was enabled by policy foundations developed over decades. Strong legal rights to settled housing for homeless households and a substantial social housing sector created the conditions for change. These foundations resulted in Scotland having rough sleeping levels significantly lower than England, making shelter closure more achievable.

During the pandemic, local authorities and charities rapidly relocated shelter residents into self-contained accommodation where possible or single-room accommodation where necessary. Welcome Centres were established as multi-agency triage hubs in Glasgow and Edinburgh.

Within eight months, and supported by a route map developed by the Everyone Home Collective of charities and academics, this emergency measure had evolved into a formal Scottish government commitment to end dormitory-style shelter provision permanently. Organisations such as Bethany Christian Trust and Glasgow City Mission, which previously operated shelters, played important roles in this transition and now provide alternative models of support.

However, this hard-won progress is now under serious threat. Levels of rough sleeping are rising rapidly while temporary accommodation use is at a historic high. Councils in Scotland’s largest cities now routinely fail to accommodate those entitled to temporary accommodation.

The Scottish parliament declared a national housing emergency in May 2024. During the winter of 2023-24, Glasgow’s Welcome Centre experienced demand surges that strained resources. In January 2024, a volunteer-run shelter opened in Glasgow despite concerns from people with lived experience of shelters about safety and health risks.

The pressures are particularly acute for those with no recourse to public funds (NRPF). Current restrictions mean this group can generally only access emergency accommodation for limited periods, if at all, pushing vulnerable people towards rough sleeping and creating renewed pressure for shelter provision.

These challenges represent a critical juncture. The housing crisis is worsening and demand for emergency accommodation is outstripping supply. Without concerted action, the risk of returning to dormitory-style shelters will only increase.

Homelessness hits people and places in different ways, but the solutions are the same: a better supply of affordable homes, a welfare safety net that enables everyone to afford suitable housing, joined-up support for people facing the toughest challenges and early action to prevent homelessness.

Investing in these essentials will help to protect those hit hardest by homelessness and most at risk of rough sleeping, while scaling solutions for a Scotland where everyone has a home. Charities, local and national government must also commit to adequately resourcing Welcome Centres that offer a proven alternative to shelters.

“Maintaining progress requires deliberate policy choices, adequate investment and unwavering commitment to the principle that emergency responses must respect dignity and provide genuine pathways to permanent housing”

Policymakers must maintain their commitment to avoiding dormitory-style emergency provision, recognising that a return to this model represents a failure to minimise housing-related harms. Barriers preventing people with NRPF from accessing emergency accommodation beyond single nights must be removed.

Scotland’s experience demonstrates that shelter-free responses are achievable, but require both the right policy foundations and sustained political will to maintain them. The Welcome Centre model has become a blueprint for safer and more effective responses to homelessness.

This progress, however, cannot be taken for granted. The threats are real, and without necessary resources and political support, Scotland’s achievement could be reversed. We cannot afford to return to responses that perpetuate harm among the most vulnerable in our society.

Scotland’s journey also offers important lessons for homelessness policy globally. It shows that reliance on harmful shared shelters is neither inevitable nor necessary. But it also demonstrates that maintaining progress requires deliberate policy choices, adequate investment and unwavering commitment to the principle that emergency responses must respect dignity and provide genuine pathways to permanent housing.

The question now is whether Scotland will protect this achievement or allow mounting pressures to erode the foundations of a more dignified and housing-led response to homelessness. The answer will not only determine the future of homelessness policy in Scotland, but will send a signal worldwide about whether progressive change can be sustained in the face of crisis.

Beth Watts-Cobbe, deputy director of the Institute for Social Policy, Housing and Equalities Research, Heriot-Watt University