Human Rights: Homelessness Justice Legal Collaboration
By Mairi Damer
Fighting back – taking on failure to deliver legal rights in housing
It’s no secret that Scotland is in the grip of a housing emergency. For several years now, we’ve seen just how difficult it is for many, many people to secure a half decent roof over their heads.
The situation is bad enough when it comes to bricks and mortar – Scotland simply does not have adequate housing stock to meet the ever-growing need – but for a group of legal experts working across the country, a further crisis has developed, a human rights crisis.
The Homelessness Justice Legal Collaboration (HJLC), a network of lawyers and rights experts, have spent the first year of their existence sharing experience and raising awareness about burgeoning breaches of people’s legal rights when it comes to housing. Group member, Frank Jarvis of Shelter Scotland’s Housing Law Service explains that breaches of the law have now become commonplace, particularly in Glasgow and Edinburgh.
“On paper, Scotland does have progressive housing legislation, legislation which is supposed to protect people’s right to be offered a roof over their head when they become homeless. Unfortunately, some local authorities are increasingly and blatantly failing to fulfil their legal obligations.
We see the same sort of situation happening over and over again. For example, when a person or a family presents as homeless to a council, in need of temporary accommodation, they are frequently being turned away, with the housing emergency being cited as the reason. This ‘gatekeeping’ is a huge problem. We all know there is limited housing stock, and that the demand is relentless, but the fact remains that turning people away is a violation of their legal rights.”
For members of the HJLC, there is a deep understanding that the housing emergency is a multi-layered problem with no quick fix solution. The Collective agrees that the long-running crisis has been decades in the making, with demolition programmes and policies like Right to Buy contributing to substantial reductions in the number of social rented homes across the country. That reduction was then exacerbated by multiple factors including a failure to build enough new houses and maintain existing stock to a decent standard, putting even more pressure on the system. All of this has resulted in increasing numbers of people being denied their legal rights, and some groups have been particularly affected as group member Rebecca Stafford of the Legal Services Agency explains.
“Scotland’s biggest cities have a long and proud history of welcoming new residents, but the welcome isn’t so warm when public services are breaking apart at the seams. Some people have sought to blame immigration for this, but it’s important to stress that the housing emergency is not the fault of migrants, it was already in full swing. What is unacceptable is for some councils to routinely fail to fulfil people’s legal right to be accommodated, no matter who they are or where they have come from.”
For the HJLC, there’s a sense that poor practice by the bigger local authority areas is now being mimicked in other parts of Scotland. But as Frank Jarvis explains, those rights are enshrined in the law, and when breaches of those rights are challenged, the success rate is high.
Virtually every member of this group has mounted dozens of legal challenges on behalf of our clients, and whenever we present a legal challenge those people do get accommodated.
“What’s not so great is that it feels like we are regressing legally, that the tide is going out. The need is so massive that our members and other support organisations are regularly having to turn people away. If we did represent everyone whose rights have been violated, the whole system would collapse.”
Despite the seeming hopelessness of the situation, the HJLC continue to push back against this failure to protect legal rights. As well as making a significant contribution to the Scottish Government’s forthcoming consultation on standards of temporary accommodation, the group are set to ramp up their efforts. Rebecca Stafford is adamant that despite the scale of the problem, no-one is throwing the towel in.
“Everyone in the group is committed to resisting this systematic erosion of legally enshrined rights. We are exploring options for using test cases to challenge rights violations, but we’re also ready to further build on our shared knowledge and experience.”