Rough sleeping crisis explodes in Scotland with hundreds facing winter on the streets

dailyrecord.co.uk:

Rough sleeping in ­Scotland has “exploded” – with hundreds facing a winter on the streets. The Daily Record can reveal a head count showed a 60 per cent rise in recent weeks.The Simon Community charity, which has handed out more than 100 sleeping bags in Edinburgh this month, claims that “every indicator” points to a major crisis this winter.

And they say emergency measures in the pandemic – which wiped out rough sleeping – need to be reintroduced.Gillian Drysdale, who runs the charity’s Edinburgh support hub, said: “Last year we had 450 people a week walk through our doors but our last count was 750, so there’s a very clear increase in need.

Our rough sleeping count in September found 80 people on the streets, when we expected no more than 50.“It was up 60 per cent and we were shocked at that.

In the last three months we’ve had 834 people come to us after 5pm at night for out-of-hours emergency housing support. That’s a 79 per cent jump from the previous quarter, which is another very negative indicator.“Basically every ­indicator is through the roof and it’s a very worrying time.” Drysdale said a “perfect storm” of inflation, Covid, Brexit and housing shortages have led to the rise.