Dear Cabinet Secretary,

In response to the UK Government’s most recent budget announcement, we are writing to urge you to allocate £196 million from Scotland’s allocated Barnett consequentials, to make up the 26 per cent cut to the Affordable Housing Supply Programme included in the Scottish Government’s budget announcement in December – a cut which will have far reaching negative consequences if left unaddressed.

We, as the representatives of the Case for Edinburgh working group, would also like to invite you to attend a meeting to discuss how we might work together to mitigate Edinburgh’s worsening housing emergency.

The most recent homelessness statistics published by the Scottish Government paint a stark picture, with homelessness clearly on the rise. Edinburgh is at the sharp end of this problem, with 3,749 households living in temporary accomodation in September 2023, including 2,910 children. The capital needs affordable housing and urgently.

We wrote to you in December, not long after Edinburgh declared a housing emergency, asking for an additional £412m to fund the Affordable Housing Supply Programme, highlighting the urgent need for housing in Edinburgh, a city which is home to 25% of Scotland’s population but contributes nearly 30% of its GDP.

Despite the city’s potential for economic prosperity, we know that employers have been finding it particularly hard to recruit for more low-paid roles, and one reason given is that potential employees can’t afford to live in the city. Funding housing in the capital is the first step towards economic growth – not just for Edinburgh but for Scotland as a whole.

Instead, the £196 million cut confirmed this February, has the potential to devastate Edinburgh’s economy and, more importantly, the health and wellbeing of its population placing extra pressure on our already struggling NHS.

A major study by the Scottish Government on health and homelessness published in 2018 found that increased interactions with health services preceded people becoming homeless and interactions with health services peaked around the time of their first homelessness application . People experiencing homelessness are at a higher risk of cancer, cardiorespiratory disease, communicable disease, all-cause mortality and hospitalisation than the general population. They are often readmitted to hospital even after discharge, usually for the same or similar reasons for initial hospitalisation .

Housing insecurity and frequently moving home has significant impacts on health and wellbeing – particularly mental health , and in Edinburgh long periods in temporary accommodation and multiple moves between placements means this is all too relevant.

Most concerningly, studies have shown that people experiencing homelessness have a much higher risk of death from a range of causes and have a much lower average age of death (just 47 years old for men and 43 for women compared to 77 for males and 81 for women in the general population).

These numbers are shocking and indicative of the devastation of homelessness on a person’s health, in a time where public health is paramount if we are to allow our struggling health services to recover.
Investment in housing is investment in public health. We urge you to consider this when allocating the additional £300 million made available following the most recent UK Budget.