Scotland's homeless women

[ArabellaScott]

https://wingsoverscotland.com/the-forgotten-women/

Laura Jones has an article on the deteriorating and dangerous situation for women in Scotland who are homeless.

'There is a clear lack of safeguarding in emergency temporary accommodation in general, but very little attention has been paid to the specific challenges faced by women who are stuck in the homeless system. Women are particularly at risk in mixed-sex emergency accommodation, and the hotels are notorious: multiple rapes and sexual assaults have been reported in recent months'

Glasgow Tactical Feminists:
'Similar to the threats, sexual assaults, and harassment homeless women are subject to from male members of the public, women consistently report experiences of abuse, victimisation, and violence from the men they are forced to share accommodation with.
Women’s lives are being put at risk through the absence of single-sex homeless accommodation. Safe housing and emergency resources are desperately needed now. Both adequate leadership and additional funding are essential to stop more women dying.”'

'The political climate in Scotland in recent years, led and driven by the Scottish Government, has made it difficult to raise women’s concerns, let alone have anyone pay attention or do anything. It’s been left to housing and women’s rights activists to stand up for some of the most vulnerable people in society and demand a homeless system that takes the needs of women and children into account.'

Bumping this; these women deserve consideration. Something you may want to ask your electoral candidates about.

What is going through the mind of the people who sign off on these desperate circumstances?

This is terrible but unsurprising. We need to have a radical, drastic change of all processes in Scotland. All of the government and agencies share responsibilities for this failure.

It is also a clear example of why single sex spaces for women are so important (as is the Edinburgh rape crisis scandal).

What bugs me is that on the scale of things, this is a problem easily solved. There aren't all that many women involved, it wouldn't take all that much money.

Instead, millions are pissed away on meaningless quangos to keep smug, useless acolytes in a job.

Women are particularly at risk in mixed-sex emergency accommodation, and the hotels are notorious: multiple rapes and sexual assaults have been reported in recent monthsOne woman reported:
“In the first hotel I was put in, a man posed as a member of staff, so I let him in. He said he had teabags and sugar for me, and could he check my toilet was working. I let him in. He raped me and left.”

It really shouldn't be this bad for women. They shouldn't have to go through this sort of shit.

'In Glasgow alone, there are 242 women currently staying in hotels/B&Bs, as well as 70 families with children staying in such places.'

'The Scottish Government’s response to the housing crisis has been inadequate, and the blame cannot all be put on UK legislation. It was the Scottish Government that decided to cut the housing budget by a swingeing 24% in this year’s budget.'

'The £200 million cut was made, reportedly, to appease the Scottish Greens, who have supported the mass demolition of social housing, in contradiction to their own policies and COP26 promises to retrofit buildings. The Housing (Scotland) Bill 2024 has been criticised by organisations such as Shelter because it does nothing to address the collapsed homelessness services and shortage of social housing.'

More here on homelessness in Glasgow, including an account of a woman who stayed in a homeless hotel:

https://theferret.scot/glasgow-homeless-hotel-million-causes-outrage/

Has there been anything in any area of life in which the current Scottish Government hasn't screwed over women?

This is absolutely terrible. Thank you for highlighting this. It really shouldn't be this way. Like you say, it can be relatively easy to fix but so much money is squandered in this country.

When it comes to ferries we are all equally screwed over?

Currently the buffer zone bill is going through. That's a small help.

Thank you posting. That is heartbreaking

The Ferret article is just awful. I really don't see how putting vulnerable women especially into these types of places could have been considered a good idea. And that's quite apart from what seems to be profiteering and financial abuse of the poor inmates.

This is progressive Scotland now

no thoughts for vulnerable women

sometimes I dislike my country.

And all that money. It’s profiteering from peoples misery

I'm also puzzled at the Greens asking for social housing to be pulled down.

This is horrific. Thank you for highlighting it

Yes, why would they do this?

I don't know. I'm going to assume bungling ineptitude. Their Housing policy includes retrofitting/renovating old housing stock.

It's a damning indictment of the contempt for vulnerable women.

This isn't happening only in Scotland. It's happening in England too (I don't know if it happens in Wales or Northern Ireland).

Particularly shocking is that many of those women will be in that position because of fleeing DV, and this is too often ignored when posters on here or offline seek help for DV and are told they should just LTB. Women are told doesn't matter if it's temporary accomodation as it's 'better than DV' and 'at least it's safe', which blatantly isn't true.

I know two separate women who experienced DV. One went to a refuge but when her time there was up she was put in temporary accommodation. She returned to her husband because it was no safer than with him. Instead of one abusive man, she was with several.

Vulnerable women are being very badly failed and I believe the housing issue is a direct factor in domestic homicides.

With the approaching GE and talk from all parties about tackling violence against women and girls, I'd be interested to know if any plan to do something about this. Because if they don't, they're not genuine about 'getting tough on DV and sexual violence'.

Yes, absolutely.

Maybe there's been a misunderstanding - hopefully the SGP aren't actively advocating to demolish social housing.
While I agree plenty can be done in terms of renovating and retrofitting older properties, I do think there's also a need for new housing stock to be built that is exclusively owned by local authorities for social housing purposes and should never be sold off to the private market. I suspect SGP might be opposed to building new homes in general - growth is a dirty word.