Shelter Scotland briefing for Housing Supply Debate

Shelter Scotland works with over half a million people in Scotland each year across all housing tenures. We believe that everyone has the right to a safe, secure affordable home and that housing is vital to people and families being able to flourish in their communities.

We know that there is increasing pressure on housing and that Audit Scotland has estimated that ‘Scotland will need more than half a million new homes over the next 25 years’ and that the supply of housing is not meeting current levels of need.1 It is within this context that the supply of housing must be made a national priority in order to start to meet current and future need.

Action we are calling for:

Shelter Scotland is calling for the Scottish Government to commit at least an additional £200m in this year’s budget to social rented house building. This would go a long way towards meeting the existing Scottish Government target of building 30,000 affordable homes over the lifetime of this parliament, including 20,000 socially-rented homes.

We also want to see a renewed emphasis on meeting housing need take centre stage in the comprehensive spending review anticipated in 2015/16.

Shelter Scotland is calling for continued and longer term funding for the Scottish Empty Homes Partnership and a further round of loan funds to bring empty homes back into use. Investing in the Scottish Empty Homes Partnership to expand its reach would mean increasing funding from around £50,000 to £130,000 in the next budget period, but with a longer term commitment to fund at this level for a period of 5 years.