On a weekday morning in Glasgow, a housing officer meets someone who has just received good news. After a long and uncertain wait, their asylum claim has been accepted - they now have the legal right to remain in the United Kingdom.

The decision should, in principle, mark the moment life can finally begin again: the start of stability. Yet it also begins a countdown. Newly recognised refugees typically have between 28 and 56 days before accommodation provided through the asylum system ends. After that asylum support payments stop. During this period individuals must transition onto mainstream benefits, usually applying for Universal Credit while simultaneously trying to secure housing. Bank accounts may need to be opened, identity documentation verified, and National Insurance and employment arrangements activated - processes that often take longer than even the extended notice period allows.

Unless housing, income and the necessary paperwork can be secured quickly in parallel, the next step may be a homelessness application. For the housing officer, this is where the case begins. Yet by the time an applicant sits across the desk, the conditions that produced the crisis have already been set in motion elsewhere, weeks or even months earlier.

As Scotland moves toward a parliamentary election in May, scenes like this are increasingly shaping political debate, as housing pressure remains acute across the country. More than 17,000 households, including over 10,000 children, are currently living in temporary accommodation, the highest number since records began. Local authorities report growing pressure. Housing waiting lists are longer, and communities begin to ask whether public systems can still cope. At the same time, asylum decisions across the UK have accelerated as the Government has moved to clear a backlog that grew significantly during and after the pandemic. 

As more people receive decisions, homelessness and asylum have begun to merge in public discussion. Are existing protections creating pressure? Is the system working as intended? Should access change? These questions are understandable. When housing is scarce, fairness becomes a practical concern rather than an abstract one. At stake is not only the wellbeing of people leaving the asylum system, but the stability of local housing markets, the sustainability of public spending and the confidence communities place in public institutions.

But how a problem is defined shapes the solutions that follow. Before conclusions harden, it is worth looking closely at what is actually happening at the point where asylum and homelessness meet. What appears to be a sudden surge in demand often turns out to be something more predictable: a transition between two systems operating on different timelines, where responsibility shifts faster than preparation.

The asylum system and Scotland’s homelessness system operate under different jurisdictions. Decisions on refugee status, including asylum accommodation and timing, are made at a UK level, while Scotland’s homelessness duties begin only when someone presents without a home.

It is at this point that responsibility shifts rapidly. Accommodation provided through the asylum system typically ends after a short notice period, while individuals must secure housing, apply for benefits, obtain documentation and attempt to enter a highly constrained housing market almost simultaneously. Each step depends on the others working smoothly, so delays in any one area may quickly cascade into housing instability. Locally this can feel like sudden demand, yet the transition itself is entirely foreseeable. From a systems perspective, this is the defining feature of preventable crises: pressure appears sudden only because preparation occurs elsewhere, under different timelines and incentives.

In Scotland, the effects land most directly in one place because for two decades asylum dispersal has been concentrated in Glasgow, where around nine in ten people seeking asylum in Scotland have been accommodated. When decisions are made, transitions that elsewhere are spread across multiple housing systems are largely absorbed by one already facing structural shortage.

This dynamic is not driven primarily by choice. Most individuals leaving asylum accommodation are already settled in Glasgow – their children attend local schools, they are registered with local doctors, and advice services and community networks are nearby. Relocating beyond the city within a short move-on period would often mean restarting access to housing, services and employment searches from scratch while navigating an unfamiliar housing system. While some people do move after status is granted, often towards family members, established communities or employment opportunities, the immediate transition into mainstream housing usually begins where dispersal has already placed them.

Settlement patterns therefore reflect continuity rather than attraction. But when many people reach the same tightly timed transition within a single housing market, pressure emerges not gradually but all at once. Seen in this light, rising homelessness applications following refugee status can tell more than one story. They may appear to suggest that homelessness protections themselves are generating pressure. They may also indicate that large numbers of people are reaching the same administrative transition without realistic pathways into housing.

The financial consequences of this distinction are significant. Accommodation within the asylum system is funded centrally by the UK Government. When that support ends and homelessness duties begin, costs shift to local authorities. Temporary accommodation – hotels, hostels or short-term lets - is among the most expensive form of housing provision available to councils. Nightly placements frequently cost several times more than settled social housing, particularly when stays extend over months.

The sequence is familiar to local practitioners. Public spending does not fall, it moves: from planned national provision to reactive local crisis response, often at higher overall cost. The result is pressure not only on those seeking housing, but on councils, taxpayers and households already waiting for support.

England illustrates this dynamic at a larger scale. Rapid clearance of the asylum backlog reduced long waiting times and was widely welcomed as an administrative improvement. Yet, in many areas, homelessness presentations rose sharply as large numbers of people reached transition points faster than local housing systems could absorb them. This pattern was identified in recent systems-wide analysis undertaken on behalf of the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government. What appeared as efficiency in one part of government generated volatility elsewhere.

Evidence from other high-income countries suggests homelessness at this transition point is not inevitable. In places such as Finland and Canada, systems treat the move from asylum support to mainstream housing as a planned handover rather than a cliff edge. Preparation begins while people are still waiting for decisions, and support overlaps briefly so housing, income and employment stabilise in sequence rather than competition. These approaches do not depend on greater generosity. They depend on better timing, and reduce pressure across housing systems as a whole. Seen this way, homelessness linked to asylum is rarely a housing failure alone. It is a handover failure between systems designed separately but experienced by people as a single journey.

As election debates intensify, calls for firm answers are inevitable. Tightening rules can feel decisive. Yet when pressure arises from poorly aligned transitions, restricting access does not remove need, it redistributes instability.

The housing officer closes the case file and moves to the next one. Each appears to mark a new crisis. In reality, many begin at the same predictable moment, when centrally managed support ends and local systems must respond without preparation.

Designing that transition differently would not benefit only those leaving the asylum system. It would reduce reliance on expensive temporary accommodation, ease pressure on waiting lists, and allow councils to invest in stability rather than crisis response.

The question Scotland faces is therefore larger than asylum or homelessness alone. It is what happens when public systems meet at their boundaries, and whether predictable change is managed by design or left to produce crisis. Because when transitions work well, everyone benefits: households waiting for housing, local authorities managing scarce resources, and communities seeking systems that feel fair, stable and in control.

• Ligia Teixeira is Chief Executive of the Centre for Homelessness Impact

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