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Scotland moves to end homelessness
Gerard Seenan
Wednesday March 05 2003
The Guardian


Every person in Scotland is to be guaranteed a home under legislation passed in
Edinburgh yesterday.

The Homelessness (Scotland) Act, passed by the Scottish parliament, is intended
to ensure that by 2012 everyone unintentionally homeless is entitled to
permanent accommodation.

The act, which received cross-party support and was widely welcomed by
homelessness charities, is the centrepiece of the Scottish executive's social
justice programme. Liz Nicholson, director of Shelter Scotland, said it was
arguably the most progressive homelessness legislation in western Europe.

As well as guaranteeing a home to all Scots, it offers greater legal protection
to those who are homeless or who are in danger of becoming homeless.

Margaret Curran, the minister for social justice, said the problem of
homelessness in Scotland was not going to be solved overnight, but the act would
tackle the root causes of the problem.

"Our work on housing will go down as amongst the most significant achievements
of this first parliament," she said.

Robert Alridge, director of the Scottish Council for Single Homeless, said the
act represented a culture change in the way homeless people were treated in
Scotland.

"The new act aims to concentrate resources on assisting homeless people to be
housed successfully, rather than on investigating how they might be rationed out
of the system," he said.

Under the new legislation, the current distinction between priority and
non-priority applications for local authority assistance will be phased out. By
2012 everyone who is unintentionally homeless will be equally entitled to a
home.

For people who are judged to have made themselves intentionally homeless, there
will be new support in the form of probationary tenancies, which will allow them
to get back into society.

There will also be changes to the process of property repossession, to help
prevent one of the causes of homelessness.

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