Glasgow City Region
Number of households assessed as homeless
The overall number of households assessed as homeless in Glasgow more than halved between 2002/03 and 2021/22, although there has been an upward trend since 2017/18, and in 2020/21 there were 5,701 households assessed as homeless in Glasgow. By comparison, figures in the other local authorities in GCR were much smaller than in Glasgow throughout the time period – totalling in 2021/22 just less than the total Glasgow figure for that year.
Over the period 2002/03 to 2021/22, homeless households rose in Renfrewshire, East Renfrewshire and West Dunbartonshire, reduced in Inverclyde and North Lanarkshire, and remained relatively unchanged in South Lanarkshire and East Dunbartonshire. Looking at this same time period, Scottish homeless household figures reduced by around 37%.
The 5,701 households in Glasgow assessed as being homeless in 2021/22 were made up of 6,460 adults and 2,591 children (28.6% children). The total number of homelessness applications made in Glasgow that year was 6,995.
Glasgow had 12% of Scotland’s population in 2021/22, but 20% of Scotland’s homeless households. Most of the other local authorities in Glasgow City Region had lower proportions of households assessed as homeless than their share of the Scottish population. West Dunbartonshire was the exception to this; although it has only 1.6% of the overall Scottish population, it had 3.5% of homeless households in 2021/22.
This chart shows the estimated homeless death rate in each of the local authorities in the Glasgow City Region in 2020. The highest rate in GCR was in West Dunbartonshire, which also had the highest rate of any local authority in Scotland. Glasgow’s rate, of 94.8, was lower than those of Inverclyde and South Lanarkshire, and higher than those of Renfrewshire and North Lanarkshire. The rate in East Dunbartonshire was much lower, at 15.1, and there were no recorded homeless deaths in East Renfrewshire in 2020, so the rate recorded there is zero.
Across Scotland, rates were higher for males than females, and highest in the age group 35-44. The majority of the deaths recorded (59%) were drug related, and 7% were recorded as suicide.
Notes
Homeless deaths figures are experimental. They are derived from counting death registration records where the person was living in temporary accommodation or sleeping rough before they died. An estimate is then added, as this is likely to undercount the true number of deaths of people experiencing homelessness. Rates are then calculated per million population – using the full adult population (aged 15-74), not only the homeless population.
This page was updated in September 2022, using figures released in August 2022. The Scottish Government updates homelessness statistics annually.