Councils and housing associations are forcing thousands of vulnerable Scots to become homeless, a charity has warned.
Shelter Scotland says a 24 per cent rise in evictions in the last shows many tenants are struggling with arrears, but claimed eviction was the wrong way to tackle the problem.
The housing and homelessness charity said the figures for evictions by social landlords were "extremely disappointing" and reversed a trend towards reducing evictions in the four previous years.
The charity said 2,130 evictions had been carried out, and claimed councils and housing associations were breaching their statutory responsibilities to prevent homelessness and safeguard and promote the welfare of children.
It also said far more notices of proceedings were being sent to tenants - 37,559 - suggesting the threat of eviction is widely used to scare tenants into paying up. But this means vulnerable families and individuals may be put through stress and trauma of legal action and the threat of losing their home unnecessarily, the charity says.
Alison Watson, deputy director of Shelter Scotland, said: “These figures should raise alarm bells about the way local authorities may be treating some of their most vulnerable and struggling tenants.
"We strongly believe that forcing someone to leave their home should only ever be an absolute last resort. A fundamental shift is needed in how rent arrears are managed. Tenants must always prioritise and take responsibility for paying their rent, but eviction is a very crude and inefficient way of dealing with rent arrears of tenants who often struggle with complex social and financial issues."
"In particular, it is doubtful whether most evictions of families are in line with the Scottish Government’s guidance to act in the best interests of children facing homelessness," she said.
Children pushed into temporary housing can be forced to move away from school, friends, family members she said, while evicting families - often over relatively low amounts of rent arrears - can be costly.
"Instead, providing proactive, and early intervention, money and debt advice and helping tenants set up realistic repayment plans would benefit not only the tenant but also wider society and the public purse."
Shelter Scotland want the Scottish Government to urgently review the rules which require landlords to use other options before seeking eviction for rent arrears, and how they are working.
Most eviction actions in social housing are raised for rent arrears - 95 per cent of council actions and 89 per cent of those by residential social landlords such as housing associations. Anti-social behaviour accounts for just six per cent of all evictions in Scotland.
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules here