Homeless charity say Edinburgh emergency is "tipping point" to save families

dailyrecord.co.uk:

The leader of one of Scotland’s biggest homeless charities has welcomed a “tipping point” that will force the supply of thousands of Scots proper homes.Ewan Aitken, CEO of Cyrenians Scotland, said this week has brought a level of pressure that the Scottish Government will find it impossible to refuse.The Record has told how Edinburgh City Council has voted emphatically for the declaration of a Housing Emergency, with other council likely to follow suit.Aitken said the time has clearly come for a brand new strategy that includes the public and private sector, which will make homes available now and ensure more are built, faster, in future years.And he said a major return to public owned housing can secure the future for millions of families in future years.Aitken said: “What we have witnessed in the last couple of weeks of quite spectacular, as neither Edinburgh City Council or the Scottish Government can deny that there is a full scale housing emergency.“We have worked around it and patched things up for many years but the reality is that there are 5,000 families in Edinburgh alone who urgently need proper homes.“I hope to hear of funding being directed to housing and I also want to see land being made available to build new homes.”The Daily Record has told this week of an explosion in street sleeping and an over-reliance on shoddy temporary homes, which are trapping 10,000 children in “limbo”, unsure even of what school they might be attending in the next term.Aitken claims there are obvious strategies to employ right now to improve things fast.He said: “We don’t need to wait around for building projects that have stalled badly.“We can immediately start to repurpose buildings that are currently unused, which would need