Homelessness Equalities Statistics

17th November 2020

Scotland's Chief Statistician today released further breakdowns of homelessness data by age, gender and ethnicity.

Findings for 2019-20 show:

compared to the Scottish population, those assessed as homeless are more likely to be: male (55% vs 48%); single adult and single parent households (88% vs 59%); in the 16-49 age range (86% vs 52%); and non-White (14% vs 5%).

women are more likely to become homeless as a result of a violent household dispute - 23% compared to 5% of men

‘other’ ethnic group households are much more likely to become homeless from supported accommodation, likely due to the large number of applications from households granted refugee status or leave to remain in the UK status in this group

drug/alcohol dependency is most common amongst those aged 35-49 (17% vs 11% for all those assessed as homeless) and men (15% vs 6% for women)

female single adult and single parent households were more likely to report a mental health need (34% and 22% respectively) than male single adult and single parent households (27% and 18% respectively)

19% of 16-17 year olds had three or more temporary accommodation placements, compared to 12% of all those assessed as homeless

81% of instances where households were not offered temporary accommodation were single males and 11% single females. This is in breach of the local authorities’ statutory duty to provide temporary accommodation. 25-49 year olds were most likely not to be offered temporary accommodation, with 77% of the 4,595 recorded instances in this age group

those with ‘other’ or ‘unknown’ ethnicity had disproportionately high levels of not being offered temporary accommodation (13% and 11% respectively of the 4,595 recorded instances). There were also a disproportionately high number of breaches for non-White ethnicities (around 200 out of 495), with the exception of White Irish