More money for affordable homes is a drop in the ocean

Last week saw the publication of a report called ‘Still Waiting’ commissioned by the Scottish Federation of Housing Associations and the Wheatley Group which revealed that nearly 250,000 people in Scotland are on a waiting list for a social home.

This report came in the same week that Holyrood voted to increase spending on affordable homes – increasing the budget for 2025/26 to £768m, which will build 8,000 new homes in the coming year. While everyone welcomes this funding increase it is only 1.9 per cent higher than 2023/24, when £752m was allocated.

This means that for the near quarter of a million on the social housing waiting list it will be a period of a decade or so before this level of investment meets demand, and that is assuming that nobody else joins the list.

The reality is that, while it is welcome that more is being spent, it is clear that this is insufficient to even remotely meet the demands of tenants in Scotland.

Meanwhile the Heat in Buildings Bill and the Housing Scotland Bill are both progressing through Holyrood. While few would doubt the laudable aims of the Heat in Buildings Bill in creating greener, more fuel-efficient homes it is the timescale and level of costs which make this untenable. Equally the Housing Scotland Bill seeks to address current housing needs with policies which will almost certainly exacerbate demand and increase rents.

The truth is that both these bills do not address the present housing emergency and have an agenda and timescale for implementation which will do little to help those with immediate housing needs. These are bills developed out of ideology and political expediency which do nothing to put a roof over the heads of tenants across Scotland.

The heating bill has set unrealistic targets which will not be met and won’t improve issues such as fuel poverty for many years to come. The Housing Scotland bill seeks to control the free market which – as the Scottish Government’s own data shows – has simply exacerbated prices in the private rented sector (PRS) over the last three years.

The solution is to encourage more housebuilding in all sectors, work with the private rented sector to produce greater investment and seriously increase the levels of investment in social housing. This is an issue which is not going to go away, which requires serious debate and immediate action.

Only by bringing together the housebuilders, the social housing sector, the private rented sector, and politicians will we even begin to start to address the very real, and serious issues which Scotland faces in meeting the needs of its population now and in the future.

This is not an issue which can be dealt with in a single five-year political cycle but one that requires the vision and the sense that only an all-sector approach would have, and which would address the major problems which Scotland faces in dealing with the current housing emergency. This requires an overarching, clear-sighted, and impartial approach to meeting housing needs and must begin immediately if the waiting lists are to fall, if demand is to be met, and if homes are to be provided for those that need them.