Edinburgh councillors approve £15.5m temporary accommodation contract
The move comes amid an ongoing temporary accommodation capacity crisis in the Capital
A £15.5m temporary accommodation contract to support homeless people in Edinburgh has been approved by city councillors.
The agreement reopens the local authority's "Supported Lodgings" system, bringing 14 suppliers on board to assist vulnerable individuals, including young people and care leavers, who need on-site help to manage a tenancy.
It will run for up to eight years, with an estimated annual value of £1.936m.
Five companies were brought on to the tender to supply only accommodation, while another eight were brought on to supply both support and accommodation.
One, Rock Trust, was brought on the contract to provide support, but not accommodation.
According to a report before councillors on Tuesday, as of November 2025 the council’s purchasing system for temporary accommodation spent £40.5m per year.
This includes procurement of private rental accommodation, home share and shared houses, contracts for homeless accommodation with support, and a range of other requirements.
Alongside the contracts, the council budget approved in March included capital investment worth £581m to increase the amount of council-owned temporary accommodation over five years.
Also, in February, councillors agreed an additional £1.6bn to deliver thousands of new homes over the next five years, marking a record spend on affordable housing, frontline services and education.
Commenting at the time, Council leader Jane Meagher said: “We were the first city in Scotland to declare a housing emergency and are now putting our money where our mouths are with an additional investment over the next five years – one of the largest housing interventions by a local authority in modern times.”
It all comes as the council continues to work on a homelessness crisis in the city, which sees large numbers of people presenting to it as homeless turned away due to a lack of capacity.
In addition, the council is now a year into a freeze of council housing allocations, which was put in place to allow existing housing stock to be used for temporary accommodation where possible.
The local investments follow a warning from Shelter Scotland in February that homelessness is becoming the "new normal", with figures showing a 9% rise in households living in temporary accommodation across the country to 18,000.