More information needed on Edinburgh homeless

Reports of a decrease in the number of rough sleepers in the city contradicted by the experience of organisations working on the ground.

The council’s current way of measuring the number of homeless people in the city is flawed, and is failing to record the true number of people sleeping rough, according to councillor Gordon Munro.

Speaking at the health, social care and housing committee, Munro called for a report looking into the issue. He said he had been contacted by a number of organisations that deliver services for homeless people in the city, and that the council’s reports of a decrease in the number of rough sleepers was contradicted by personal experience.

He spoke about a shelter for rough sleepers that he visited recently just before it was closed down. “I asked, what happens to these people next week? There were 40 people there. I still don’t know the answer to that” he said.

Councillor Elaine Aitken had also visited the shelter on the same night, and commented on the fact that many of the homeless people in Edinburgh were from Eastern-Europe, and did not easily fit into council services.

“They do live very chaotic lifestyles, which make it hard to get tenancy – they’ve lost their passports, their ID cards…they’ve slipped through every net” she said.

Munro’s motion called for a “robust reporting system, including information from service providers, to be put in place so that the true figures of rough sleepers in Edinburgh are known.”

However, convenor of the committee, councillor Paul Edie advanced his own motion which would seek “further sources of information” from providers, but fell short of calling for a full report on the way homlessness is measured.

Edie rejected Munro’s suggestion that the council’s policy on homelessness was not successful. He said that he was quite willing to hear from organisations working with homeless people on the issue – but that he had heard nothing to that effect so far.

He also pointed out that the methodology used to measure homelessness was the same one that had been used by the last Labour council administration.