A DEAL struck this week presents a huge opportunity for tackling homelessness in Glasgow.

Housing First is a radical solution targeted at the most difficult to reach homeless people.

They are people for whom the problem is not purely the lack of a suitable home but multi-faceted issues that have combined leading then to be homeless.

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It takes a fresh look at the problem and recognises that what has gone before has not had enough of an impact for this section of the population.

Providing a home for these people who find themselves in this desperate situation solves nothing because that only meets one of their many needs.

It is the issues that led them to be homeless that need to be addressed.

Previously these issues, like drink and drug addiction, past trauma including abuse and abandonment, criminality and institutionalisation have been tried to be dealt with while they are still homeless, flitting in an out of hostels and sleeping rough.

But, it didn’t work for most people.

Housing First puts them in a tenancy and provides the intensive support from agencies needed to help them manage their life and sustain the tenancy.

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The Glasgow project will see more than 50 flats made available for Housing First by Wheatley Group, funding for setting up the tenancies provided by charity Social Bite and Glasgow City Council co-ordinating support through agencies.

It is a bold step by all three but a recognition that serious action is required if this stubborn problem is to be dealt with.

What it will not do is end homelessness or stop rough sleeping in the streets of Glasgow.

The problems which befell those 50 people who will initially be helped this year are affecting many others and sadly there is a conveyor belt of social problems capturing these people and dumping them on the streets.

While Housing First will hopefully help get people back into a position where they can cope with mainstream society, it will not cure the social ills.

Investment in services to help people before they get to that stage must be increased.

The cost of early intervention is cheaper than the cost to the health and social work service not to mention the justice system of dealing with the consequences.

Cuts to budgets for local drug and alcohol addiction services will make it more difficult to get targeted support to people.

Continued welfare reforms pushing people deeper into mental illness and forcing them further into debt makes the end result of homelessness far more likely.

Governments can no longer be allowed to create these conditions and then expect charities and the third sector to scramble to pick up the pieces.

The human cost in terms of lives destroyed and families torn apart is unquantifiable.

None of these people are beyond help and as a society they should never be written off as a lost cause.

For many of those on the streets or in hostels there is a family somewhere waiting and hoping for their son or daughter, sister or brother or mother or father back.

All those involved deserve recognition for putting their faith in this and Housing First deserves to work but it needs long term sustained investment.