edinburgh 2025 cities ending homelessness forum
The Homeless World Cup Foundation hosted a Cities Ending Homelessness Forum on Thursday 17th July at Edinburgh's City Chambers alongside the City Council
Words and images by Isobel Irvine:
Twenty years ago (20th - 27th July 2005) the Homeless World Cup took place in Edinburgh, the third edition of the tournament, with 200 players parading at Meadowbank Sports Centre for the Opening Parade and Ceremony - where Homeless World Cup Foundation co-founder Mel Young officially opened the event - and matches in Princes Street Gardens.
Last Thursday (17th July) there was a special Edinburgh Cities Ending Homelessness Forum held at the City Chambers in Scotland’s capital - ahead of next month’s tournament and Cities Ending Homelessness Forum in Oslo. Attendees at the City Chambers were greeted by Mel Young’s golden handprints and his name on the board of prestigious Edinburgh Award recipients.
While the Foundation’s goal is for a world without homelessness - and consequently no requirement for future Homeless World Cups - there’s no denying the event, the challenges and the efforts to identify solutions have grown over the last two decades.
The Edinburgh 2025 Cities Ending Homelessness Forum was the first time that one of these events has been held outside of the annual Homeless World Cup tournament, with over 80 attendees from different sectors joining forces to explore tangible solutions to homelessness, tailored to the needs of Edinburgh and Scotland.
Depute Lord Provost and Convenor of the Housing, Homelessness and Fair Work Committee, Cllr Lesley Marion Cameron opened proceedings, setting the tone for the day when she declared, “I’m tired of sitting and talking, we need to find solutions,” underlining her desire to work on the points raised by the Forum by bringing parties together again in Edinburgh later in the year.
While highlighting Edinburgh’s substantial problem with homelessness and social housing - “We have seven and half thousand households without a permanent home…it’s not right in a city so economically successful that we have an ongoing challenge of people waiting for housing.” - Cllr Cameron added that, on a positive note, a higher than average 80% of available social housing was given to housing homeless people in the city.
Mel Young then took the floor to outline the Cities Ending Homelessness initiative explaining that, in addition to raising awareness through the global tournaments, the aim is:
“To make an even greater impact we needed to have a Forum that brings together all the major players from the NGO sector, who are doing great work, together with policy makers, researchers and academics around the world on the basis that we want to know what the solutions are.”
Professor Beth Watts-Cobbe at the Cities Ending Homelessness Forum
Next to present at the City Chambers was Professor Beth Watts-Cobbe (Deputy Director at the Institute for Social Policy, Housing and Equalities Research at Heriot-Watt University) who outlined the key causes of homelessness in the city and solutions that were in progress, drawing on the Homeless Monitor Research Programme.
She revealed that in addition to a 77% increase year on year [2023/4] in rough sleepers in the city, “A big challenge in Edinburgh is related to the use of very poor quality temporary accommodation with 158 per 10,000 households in temporary accommodation [2023/24], putting Edinburgh top of the table by a long way in Scotland.”
Ongoing positive work included bringing void council properties back into use, commissioning more supported accommodation, working with tenants and landlords to save tenancies, more provision of welfare rights advice and financial inclusion work.
Attention then turned to a panel discussion, moderated by Mel Young - involving Andy Hook (Head of Programmes, Street Soccer Scotland), Rachel McLean (former HWC player in Paris 2011), Emma Easton (Education Manager, Spartans Community Foundation) and Dougie Millen (Lead Manager, Sportscotland) - around sport as a proven solution to homelessness and social isolation.
Particularly well received was Rachel’s emotive story of how participating in and captaining Scotland at the tournament in 2011 had changed her life, led to volunteering for Street Soccer Scotland and inspired her to embark on a degree course at Edinburgh University. “I was very fortunate that I love football and Street Soccer Scotland was there for me,” she said. “I’ve met so many fantastic friends who have supported me along the way, helping build me into the person I want to be.”
The afternoon session opened with Angie Lee (Director of Venture Services, The Ventures Lab) on work to bring the Australian Homes for Homes model to Scotland. This is a mechanism whereby when a home sells, 0.1% of the sale price is donated to help build homes for those in need. It’s a venture on track to raise AUS$1bn over the next 30 years. “It’s working in Australia,” she added, “and for us the challenge is how does Scotland bring that model to the table?”
With 53,500 people in Scotland currently living without a home - including more than 15,400 children - “It’s an opportunity to make a difference during the short time we’re on this earth” Angie concluded.
It was then over to Jonathan Tan, CEO and Co-founder of Greater Change, a charity that provides personalised cash grants and individual support to help people in their journey out of homelessness, into sustainable housing and work. The charity works with local partners and authorities to match funding and Jonathan underlined, “When you give people the dignity of choice, they tend to make good decisions.”
Delegates then broke into interactive workshops to discuss ideas on how to end homelessness, centred on three key areas relevant to Edinburgh: Temporary Housing (facilitated by Jonathan Tan); Mental Health (facilitated by Fiona Benton and Lindsay Wards of SAMH); and Women’s Homelessness and GBV (facilitated by Julie MacDonald and Dorota Oleksiewicz of Edinburgh Women’s Aid). Feedback and responses from the workshops, back in the Main Chamber, closed the Forum.
Our thanks to the City of Edinburgh Council for providing the venue, catering and tech support and to all who participated and attended.
Together we will make a difference.
One of the interactive workshops from the Edinburgh 2025 Cities Ending Homelessness Forum
Find out more about the initiative, upcoming Forum and solutions on our Cities Ending Homelessness webpage.
The Oslo 2025 Cities Ending Homelessness Forum on Monday 25 August will be live-streamed from the Nobel Peace Centre in Oslo.
Watch out for our announcement with details later this week or sign up to our Mailing list to receive information directly.
Images from our Cities Ending Homelessness Conferences in Sacramento (2023) and Seoul (2024)