This is a profound moral and systemic repeated failure by both local councils and national government in Scotland. Placing vulnerable women—many fleeing domestic abuse, trauma, or poverty—alongside men in mixed-sex temporary accommodation (hostels, B&Bs, or "homeless hotels") exposes them to predation, drugs, violence, and re-traumatisation, often with their children present. It is indefensible.

The Human Cost

Women experiencing homelessness already face sky-high rates of prior victimisation: domestic abuse drives much of it, with studies showing 40%+ of homeless women citing it as a key factor. Many have histories of childhood sexual abuse, assault, or coercive control. Mixed-sex settings turn "temporary" shelter into a gauntlet of fear.

Reports document harassment, sexual assaults, rapes, exploitation, and drug exposure in these environments. Women describe men entering rooms at night, trafficking risks, and feeling "terrified" or "ruthless" conditions. Children witness or face indirect harm. PE2147: Create more women-only homeless accommodation that protects and meets the specific needs of women highlights the depravity in such accommodation and the wanton complicity and neglect of central government, council and safeguarding institutions.

Women avoid these places when possible—couch-surfing, staying rough, or returning to abusers—because the "solution" feels more dangerous than the street. Only a tiny fraction of homelessness services offer proper single-sex options.

Where Are the Safeguards?

• Police: respond to incidents after the fact, but the system proactively creates high-risk environments. Why silo vulnerable women with unrelated men (some with criminal histories) without robust separation, staffing, or monitoring?
• Care services and safeguarding: Local authorities have duties under homelessness legislation and the Domestic Abuse Act 2021 to provide "safe accommodation"—defined as single-sex where needed, not mixed hostels. Yet shortages lead to routine placements in unsuitable spots. Statutory guidance explicitly warns against mixed-gender settings for domestic abuse survivors, calling them threatening and re-traumatising.
• Decision-makers: Councils cite "lack of stock" and housing crises, but this reflects years of policy neglect—underinvestment in women-only refuges, failure to prioritise gender-specific needs, and broader housing shortages. National governments set the framework, fund inadequately, and allow local "temporary" measures to become normalised abuse enablers.

This isn't an accident of austerity or "unforeseen demand." Evidence on gendered homelessness—higher risks of sexual violence for women, the need for single-sex spaces—has existed for decades. Petitions from Laura Jones of the STO mentioned above, reports from Women's Aid, Scottish Women's Aid, and researchers repeatedly call for women-only emergency accommodation. Yet the response is deafening in its silent absence.

The Indictment

Who allows mothers and children to be housed in drug-fueled, predation-prone mixed hotels? Policymakers who value spreadsheets, procurement rules, and "inclusivity" optics over basic safeguarding. They sleep at night by calling it "complex," "resource-constrained," or deflecting to "wider systemic issues" while real women endure what amounts to state-facilitated revictimisation.This betrays core duties: protect the vulnerable, especially those with dependent children; prevent foreseeable harm; uphold equality and dignity. It echoes institutional neglect where ideology or inertia trumps evidence—women's documented need for safety from male-pattern violence in congregate settings.

Children in these hotels aren't collateral—they are victims of a system that removes them from one danger only to deposit them in another. Decision-makers who sign off on these placements, approve budgets ignoring single-sex provision, or dismiss calls for reform, bear direct responsibility. Their "compassionate" homelessness strategies become engines of further trauma.

The Way Forward (Demand It)

Local Government with financial and 'joined up' policy support from Central Government must:

• Massively expand single-sex temporary accommodation for women, mothers and children.
• Enforce safeguarding rigorously—no more routine mixed placements for high-risk groups.
• Integrate VAWG (violence against women and girls) expertise into homelessness responses.
• Treat this as the calamity it is, not a line item.

Anything less is complicity. Survivors and advocates have documented the horrors; continued inaction indicts the entire apparatus as one that sacrifices women's and children's safety for bureaucratic convenience. This must end.