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Alastair Cameron on poverty

Government figures show that about one million people in Scotland (20% of the total) live below the low income threshold, writes Alastair Cameron, chief executive of Scottish Churches Housing Action.

There were 60,000 applications to local councils as homeless in Scotland last year - almost 95,000 people, one-third of them children. More than 128,000 families are on local authority housing waiting lists, with only 30,000 homes available for let each year.

Poverty & Homelessness Action Week is the product of organisations belonging to the churches - Scottish Churches Housing Action, Church Action on Poverty, Housing Justice, and the Church Urban Fund. We set a target that at least 100 events across the UK would highlight the problems of those on the margins.

The Scottish events demonstrate creativity often hidden amongst the traumas of poverty and homelessness.

On Tuesday, I shall be at the Scottish parliament with the moderator of the General Assembly of the Church of Scotland, meeting Duncan McNeill MSP and his colleagues from the parliament's communities committee.

We'll be raising some of the key questions asked by people in poverty in Scotland today. Rather than the minimum wage, shouldn't we be looking at a fair wage that allows full participation in the benefits of society? When we're building more houses, can't we make sure that enough are affordable to people on low incomes, and available on rent to those who cannot buy?

Full article at the Sunday Herald.