Locals have seen their applications frozen as the Scottish capital grapples with a homelessness crisis
The Labour-run city council in Edinburgh has been prioritizing homeless migrants for social housing, while putting thousands of requests from Scottish nationals on hold, the Telegraph has reported, citing the administration’s internal documents.
The proportion of temporary accommodations provided to migrants in Scotland’s capital has grown from 1% to 16% since 2023, the paper said in an article on Friday.
The foreigners were put atop the waiting line under a policy introduced in April 2025, the report read. Meanwhile, applications from some 31,000 locals remained frozen, it added.
Edinburgh is facing a homelessness crisis, which has been exacerbated by the influx of migrants into Britain, the Telegraph said, citing the council’s internal documents. The number of homeless people in the city has surged by 75% over the last five years, it added.
Many migrants whose asylum claims have been approved by the Home Office choose to come to Scotland in search of accommodation due to its liberal housing policies, according to the paper.
Scotland abolished the “priority need” test in 2012, making all people assessed as unintentionally homeless eligible for settled accommodation. In 2022, the Scottish National Party (SNP) government also removed local-connection requirements for homeless applicants within Scotland.
Reform UK’s Scottish deputy leader, Thomas Kerr, said the council should stop providing housing to “strangers and outsiders” and finally start taking care of its own people.
“We need to see local connection rules fully restored, more social housing built and deportations for those who should not even be here in the first place,” he wrote.
According to Kerr, Scottish “nationals who work hard, pay their taxes, reach across their community are worth more than finding themselves slipping further down the list.”
When approached for comment by the Telegraph, Scottish Housing Minister Shirley-Anne Somerville said that “Scotland has some of the strongest homelessness rights in the world, and we will not roll these back.”
The homelessness crisis is a result of the migration policies of the British government, and it is up to London to “properly fund its asylum processes and ensure newly recognized refugees and communities can be supported,” Somerville said.
Nearly 100,000 people were receiving asylum support in the UK as of the end of March, according to government figures, including more than 20,000 housed in hotels.
A YouGov poll published earlier in August showed that 69% of Britons believe immigration over the past decade has been too high, while 43% said it had been mostly bad for the country, up from 33% in 2016.
