It’s been 15 years since Turning Point Scotland led the first pilot of Housing First in Glasgow. It was the first Housing First project in Scotland (indeed, the first in the UK) as well as one of the first Housing First projects globally to explicitly target people who were actively using drugs.
Looking at how Housing First is embedded in many areas of Scotland as part of the service landscape, listening to the way it is discussed at all levels of government and seeing how it is included in legislation, it’s perhaps easy to forget how that first Housing First pilot was first received in 2010. There was a lot of scepticism and doubt – from almost every corner, including, if I’m honest, from myself. Questions and assumptions I heard over and over at conferences and workshops showed a scepticism that people really could maintain a tenancy and that the system could even accommodate Housing First.
“If people aren’t tenancy ready, aren’t we setting them up to fail?”
“There will be huge issues with anti social behaviour.”
“Aren’t we letting people skip the housing queue?”
Open and challenging conversations over months and years paid off – as did a growing international evidence base of the effectiveness of Housing First, tested in Scotland through Housing First Pathfinders. Now, 15 years on, Housing First is accepted as a key part of Scotland’s response to homelessness and the default response for those people with multiple and complex support needs.
However, we know that we still have a long way to go – we need to scale up our delivery quickly and comprehensively to meet current needs and we must continue to work hard to ensure that, as Housing First is scaled up, we maintain a close fidelity to the principles of Housing First that we know are so important. We must also ensure that Housing First is not seen as a standalone wrap-around service. Instead, it is and should be seen as the centre point of a coordinated service delivered by specialist partners from health and social care and other partners like justice.
As successful as Housing First has proved to be, we also know that there are a small number of people for whom it is not suitable or it is not wanted. We think that there is a gap for settled, high quality supported housing with no time limit and coordinated wrap around support. This should sit alongside Housing First in a range of housing options for people who are experiencing or at risk of homelessness.
We believe in Housing First and we’re proud of the role we’ve played in its development in Scotland over the last 15 years. In order to continue the development and scale up of Housing First over the next 15 years, we believe that a new oversight group for Housing First, with representatives from Scottish Government, local authorities, health and social care, justice and Housing First providers could provide direction, guidance and pressure to scale up Housing First services to meet demand.
To mark 15 years of Housing First in Scotland, to reflect on our progress and what still needs to be done, Turning Point Scotland have written a paper, Housing First – Fifteen Years On. You can read the paper here.
We welcome a continuing discussion with partners in Scotland and further afield about how we continue to develop, embed and protect Housing First for now and into the future.
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About the author:
Heather McCluskey is the Practice and Innovation Lead – Homelessness and Prevention (Turning Point Scotland)