A CAMPAIGN highlighting the “national shame of homelessness” came to Paisley this week.

Shelter Scotland’s ‘Homelessness: Far From Fixed’ campaign visited the town to gather public and political support to tackle the problem of homelessness.

The charity has called Scotland’s current level of homelessness a “national badge of shame for one of the world’s richest nations.”

And it has accused local and national government of taking their eye off the ball when it comes to tackling and preventing homelessness.

The campaign urges members of the public and politicians to sign up to its demands of local and national government. 

To coincide with the campaign launch, Shelter Scotland released new research by YouGov which shows that 75 per cent of people in Scotland agree that homelessness is a problem.

Meanwhile, 54 per cent agree the Scottish Government could do more to tackle it.

The campaign’s main demands are a safe and affordable home for everyone, making help available for everyone to keep or find a home, a strong housing safety net to catch people if they do lose their home and that no-one should ever have to sleep rough on Scotland’s streets.

Alison Watson, deputy director of Shelter Scotland, said: “We brought our campaign to Paisley to show people that it is frankly a disgrace that homelessness still exists in Scotland today.

“We are one of the richest nations in the world, yet in Scotland nearly 30,000 households became homeless last year and more than 65,000 households approached their local authority for help with housing.

“It’s shameful that each year there are thousands of people sleeping rough on our streets, that there are thousands more hidden homeless people sofa-surfing with friends and that, tomorrow morning, more than 5,700 children in Scotland will wake up in temporary accommodation without a permanent home of their own.

“Shelter Scotland thinks that the time for good rhetoric and resting on our laurels is over. We need to face up to the reality that, despite good progress in recent years, we are still failing too many people in our society, particularly the most vulnerable, with the most basic of human rights – the right to shelter and a home.”

In support of its campaign, Shelter Scotland has produced a detailed policy paper which can be found online at http://bit.ly/2lCChJf.

For more advice, visit www.shelterscotland.org or call 0808 800 4444.