Scottish Government £1m Upstream Homelessness Prevention Fund - Recipients Announced
SFHA and Homeless Network Scotland are jointly administering the Scottish Government’s Upstream Homeless Prevention Fund.
SFHA and Homeless Network Scotland are jointly administering the Scottish Government’s Upstream Homeless Prevention Fund.
The projects form a learning programme running from June 2025-April 2026, with an overarching aim to prevent homelessness by funding tenancy sustainment and early intervention activities. The range of funded activities help tenants remain in their homes, and by doing so learn more about RSLs future role in relation to the new prevention duties outlined in the Housing Bill. The projects support new and existing partnerships between RSLs and the third sector to provide community-based, partnership activities dedicated to tenancy sustainment. Each local partnership includes a cash fund to enable individual cash payments of up to £1,300 to practically help prevent or exit homelessness.
The successful projects are:
- Orkney Housing Association - ‘Housing First Orkney’ (Orkney Isles)
- Aberdeen Cyrenians - ‘Aberdeen Tasking & Activation partnership (ATAP)’ (Aberdeen City)
- West of Scotland Housing Association - ‘Ready, Steady, Roots’ (Glasgow, North Lanarkshire, South Lanarkshire, East Ayrshire, North Ayrshire, South Ayrshire)
- Fife Housing Group – ‘Fife Housing Alliance Tenancy Support Project’ (Fife)
- Sanctuary – Housing and Community Connector’ (Dundee)
- West Granton Housing Association -- ‘Get Settled Archie project’ (Edinburgh)
- Berwickshire Housing Association—Domestic Abuse: Tenancy Support Project (East Scottish Borders)
The fund will promote learning ahead of the “Ask and Act” Homelessness Prevention duties introduced in the Housing Bill. It is supporting RSLs, the third and community sector to understand respective roles and connections to other ‘relevant bodies’ and test local route maps to the new prevention duties. In doing so, the fund is supporting understanding of housing association’s roles to specifically:
- Ask about housing circumstances through existing functions.
- Act on the information received, to prevent homelessness or mitigate risk by using existing powers.
- Refer to local authority for homelessness assistance, if necessary, rather than by default.
The Fund will be accompanied by a programme of peer learning sessions and a final evaluation in 2026 that SFHA/HNS will make available to the wider memberships.
It was an extremely competitive fund with many high-quality applications. Thank you to all who applied and congratulations to the seven awardees.