The Scottish Council for Voluntary Organisations is the membership organisation for Scotland's charities, voluntary organisations and social enterprises. Charity registered in Scotland SC003558. Registered office Caledonian Exchange, 19A Canning Street, Edinburgh EH3 8EG.
Housing & homelessness
Scotland is in the grip of a housing emergency. Declared by the Scottish Parliament in 2024, the emergency is felt most acutely by the people our services support: young people, families, and vulnerable adults who find themselves without a safe, secure place to call home. And on the frontline of responding to this emergency are the voluntary sector organisations that provide housing support, homelessness services, and the wraparound care that helps people to rebuild their lives.
Yet the organisations delivering this essential work do so within a funding landscape that is short-term, uncertain, and frequently fails to reflect the true cost and complexity of the services being provided. Much of the funding available is delivered on an annual basis, with confirmation often arriving late, and multi-year commitments remain rare. Standstill settlements that fail to keep pace with inflation are, in real terms, cuts, placing ever greater strain on organisations already stretched to the limit.
The impact of this funding environment is felt every single day by the people delivering these services and the people who rely on them. It undermines the ability of organisations to plan ahead, to retain skilled and experienced staff, and to provide the consistent, relationship-based support that is so essential to helping people move out of homelessness and towards more stable, secure futures.
Fair Funding would provide the stability and security that housing and homelessness organisations so desperately need. Multi-year funding, timely decisions, and inflationary uplifts that reflect the true cost of delivering these services would allow the sector to plan ahead, retain skilled staff, and continue responding to Scotland’s housing emergency.
The political choice not to implement Fair Funding will continue to harm people
With a housing emergency declared by the Scottish Parliament in 2024, and with homelessness at record levels, few challenges facing Scotland are as urgent as ensuring that everyone has access to a safe, secure, and affordable place to call home. The Scottish Government has committed to responding to this emergency, and central to that response is the voluntary sector, which delivers a huge proportion of the housing support and homelessness services that people across the country rely on.
From supported accommodation and temporary housing to advice, advocacy, and the wraparound support that helps people to sustain tenancies and rebuild their lives, voluntary organisations are absolutely central to Scotland’s response to the housing emergency. But these organisations are being asked to respond to ever-increasing demand within a funding landscape that provides neither the stability nor the security they need.
“We’re dealing with more demand than ever before, but our funding hasn’t kept pace,” explains an organisation providing housing support. “We’re being asked to do more and more with less and less, and there’s only so long that can continue.”
“The short-term funding makes it impossible to plan for the future,” admits a homelessness charity. “We can’t offer our staff security, and we can’t give the people we support the consistency they need. It’s the opposite of what works.”
“Our staff are absorbing the consequences of the housing emergency every day,” adds an organisation supporting people experiencing homelessness. “The funding insecurity just adds to that pressure, and it’s taking a real toll on the people who deliver these vital services.”
The implementation of Fair Funding would allow housing and homelessness organisations to move away from this constant instability, providing the stability and security needed to plan ahead, retain skilled staff, and continue responding to Scotland’s housing emergency. The failure to implement Fair Funding, by contrast, is a political choice, and one that will continue to harm the people who rely on these vital services.
“Fair Funding would allow us to plan, to invest in our people, and to focus on supporting people out of homelessness,” says the housing support organisation. “It would make an enormous difference at a time when it’s needed more than ever.”
West Granton Housing Co-Operative
West Granton Housing Co-Operative is a fully mutual housing co-operative in Edinburgh, owned and controlled by its tenant members. Providing affordable, good-quality homes to its members, the co-operative represents a genuinely community-led approach to housing, in which the people who live in the homes are the very people who own and run the organisation. This model gives tenants a real say in the decisions that affect their homes and their community, fostering a strong sense of ownership, responsibility, and pride.
Operating within Scotland’s challenging housing landscape, however, the co-operative faces a range of pressures. Rising costs, increasing demand, and the wider context of a declared housing emergency all place significant strain on the organisation and its ability to continue providing affordable homes and responding to the needs of its members. As a small, community-led organisation, the co-operative must navigate these challenges with limited resources and capacity.
The funding landscape presents particular difficulties. Short-term and uncertain funding makes it difficult to plan ahead with confidence, while funding that fails to keep pace with rising costs places ever greater strain on the organisation’s finances. As with so many organisations across the sector, the constant need to search for and secure funding diverts valuable time and resources away from the core work of providing and maintaining good-quality, affordable homes.
These pressures are felt all the more acutely given the essential nature of the co-operative’s work. In the context of a housing emergency, the provision of affordable, secure, community-controlled housing has never been more important. Yet the funding environment within which the co-operative operates makes it increasingly difficult to sustain and develop this vital work, placing at risk the affordable homes and strong community that the organisation has worked so hard to build.
For West Granton Housing Co-Operative, the implementation of Fair Funding would provide the stability and security needed to continue its important work. Multi-year funding and settlements that reflect the true and rising costs of providing and maintaining affordable homes would allow the co-operative to plan ahead with confidence, invest in its homes and community, and continue delivering the community-led, affordable housing that its members rely on.