Scotland’s housing emergency is having a disproportionate impact on women, a report has found.
Research by the Shelter and Engender charities found that higher rates of poverty among females and their greater reliance on social security benefits was restricting their access to housing.
Around a third of households with a female head are in the social rented sector, compared with fewer than one in five households with a male head.
Last year 75 per cent of single-parent households assessed as homeless were headed by women, while with children spend much longer trapped in temporary accommodation due to the lack of larger social homes available.
It comes after official figures published found the number of Scots who had registered as homeless had reached the highest number in more than a decade. Soaring private rental costs and a lack of social housing has also been blamed for the number of children stuck living with their families in temporary accommodation to reach the highest level on record.
But the new report warns that homelessness services in Scotland are also often unequipped to respond to women’s specific needs, particularly those fleeing domestic abuse. Women’s caring responsibilities and concerns over safety also create additional requirements for the type of temporary homeless accommodation that they need to access, which local services too often fail to meet.
Alison Watson of Shelter Scotland said: “This report sets out in the clearest terms the specific and disproportionate harm done to women by the housing emergency. Following on from the devastating homelessness figures published recently, the report is a timely reminder that Scotland’s housing system is not only utterly broken, but also biased as well.
“We know that when it comes to housing, councils are breaking the law on an industrial scale, denying support to those who need it and are entitled to it; for a woman fleeing domestic violence the consequences of being turned away could be utterly catastrophic.
“Childcaring responsibilities are also far more likely to fall to women, so growing child homelessness will of course have a hugely disproportionate impact on women in Scotland. Scotland’s housing emergency is devastating the lives of women every day; every level of government has a responsibility to act and to heed the recommendations in this report.”
Catherine Murphy, chief executive at Engender, said: “Our report with Shelter Scotland demonstrates the multiple barriers that our current housing system stacks in front of women, and the shocking ways it ignores their specific needs, pushing women into cycles of poverty and instability.
“The situation is even worse for women dealing with multiple layers of inequality. BME, disabled, and refugee women, lone parents, and those with caring responsibilities, often face relentless difficulty in securing stable housing.
“The official homelessness statistics tell us only a fraction of the story, as they fail to capture the complexity of women’s experiences, leaving them ‘hidden’ from our understanding of the problem.
“The recent pilot fund for women experiencing domestic abuse is a positive step, but it barely scratches the surface of what’s needed to address the housing emergency women face.
“Any serious response to Scotland’s housing crisis must start with acknowledging the deep gender bias in the system and taking targeted action to improve women’s access to safe, secure, and affordable homes.”
Paul McLennan, the Housing Minister, said: “We recognise that domestic abuse is a leading cause of women’s homelessness in Scotland. This is unacceptable. Tackling the housing emergency will require a joint approach between the Scottish and UK government and all of Scotland’s local authorities and we will work to ensure women are prevented from homelessness as much as we can.
“We have introduced measures in our Housing Bill which will put a new duty on social landlords to develop and implement a domestic abuse policy outlining how they will support their tenants who are at risk of homelessness due to domestic abuse. This includes protecting the rights of women to stay safely in their own homes. It should, and must, be their choice.”
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