Scottish housing emergency one year on: 'There is no credible plan'
In the last 12 months, homelessness has risen. Social housebuilding has fallen. Our study with YouGov found 2.3 million adults struggling with the condition, security, suitability, or affordability of their home, or facing discrimination when trying to find one. Behind these statistics are families living in fear. Children growing up without space, safety, or dignity. All while John Swinney vows to end child poverty.
But child poverty cannot be tackled without ending child homelessness. And the latest Programme for Government fails to offer either a plan or the investment to do so.
It is now clear: there is no credible plan to deliver 110,000 homes and no serious effort to cut the number of households stuck in temporary accommodation. We need a Programme for Housing. What we got was a Programme for Homelessness.
Read more on Scotland's Housing Emergency:
Despite systemic failures in homelessness services across Scotland, there is no commitment to ramp up social housebuilding, no expanded budget, and no real investment in services to prevent more people falling into homelessness.
Politicians are failing in their duty. They look away as wave after wave of families fall through the cracks. We know what it means for families to live in overcrowded, unsafe homes - to be unable to host a friend, to live in fear, to be isolated. We now have evidence of the profound harm this does to children's development and mental health, casting a shadow long into their future.
We don't need more excuses. We need a Housing Emergency Action Plan - with clear, concrete targets, proper funding, and a genuine commitment to affordable, secure, permanent homes. Not a plan that shuffles people from one crisis to another.
As the Scottish General Election approaches, every political party has a choice to make continue treating housing as a second-tier issue or rise to the challenge and put it where it belongs - at the centre of the agenda.
Voters have power, too. We can demand more. We can ask the hard questions. We can refuse to accept that this is the best Scotland can do. Because everyone deserves more than just a roof over their head. Everyone deserves safety, stability, peace.
It has been a year. If our politicians won't treat the housing emergency like the emergency it is, then we must.
It is time to say: enough is enough. If those in power won't act, then it's up to all of us to speak out, stand up, and fight for the right to a home.
Alison Watson is a director at Shelter Scotland.
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