Scotland needs more affordable homes. There are over 200,000 people on local authority house waiting lists. Around 40,000 households are accepted as homeless each year, with almost 10,000 languishing in temporary accommodation at any one time. In the short term, pressures are likely to grow as access to the private market is restricted and as new challenges – such as the target to house all homeless people by 2012 – loom larger. Leading housing organisations, including Shelter, the Scottish Federation of Housing Associations and the Chartered Institute of Housing have estimated that a programme of 10,000 affordable rented homes each year for three years is needed to address these unmet and future needs. In this paper Shelter argues that there are compelling arguments as to why any additional funding coming to the Scottish budget should be directed into such housing programmes.