A Warm, Safe Home For Everyone
Everyone deserves a place to call home.
But millions of people in Scotland are now impacted by the housing emergency, stuck in unsuitable accommodation, unable to afford their own home. Decades of volume house building by private developers has failed to relieve the pressure on our housing system.
Rapidly building good quality social housing must be a top priority of the next Scottish Government. The homes we build have to be truly affordable, and in the places people want to live.
By building homes we are building communities. That’s why we will introduce new standards to ensure that all developments must provide access to facilities such as local public services, play and green spaces and public transport, so that new communities thrive.
At the same time as we have unacceptable levels of homelessness, absentee property owners allow homes to lie empty, and developers sit on land that could be used to build more homes. That’s why we will use the tax system to encourage second homes, holiday homes and vacant land owners to sell up, and empower local communities to force the sale or rent of long-term empty properties and land.
Along with a new human right to housing and targeted support for those most at risk of homelessness, these measures will ensure that we achieve our ambition of ending homelessness by 2040.
More homes, in the right places
- Build at least 15,700 more social homes each year between now and 2031, and provide multi-year funding, which will give social housebuilders certainty.
- Give local Registered Social Landlords, including local councils, first right of refusal on purchase of properties sold under the disastrous right-to-buy policy, when they come on to the market.
- Give councils the power to force owners of derelict land and property to sell or rent it for housing.
- Continue to financially support the ‘off the shelf’ purchase of properties by local councils, so that these properties can be quickly brought into use as social homes.
- Support the development of alternative housing models, such as self-build, co-housing and housing co-operatives.
- Make it easier for local councils to block the use of land for purpose-built student accommodation that could be better used to provide long-term homes.
- Support councils to build more homes, and more of the right types of homes for their areas, by reviewing the way housing supply programmes are planned and funded.
Better quality homes
- Require that all new homes meet net zero standards, be connected to zero-carbon public transport, not be built in flood risk areas, and provide green and growing space for residents and the local community.
- Ensure that where affordable housing is provided as part of a development, they are built to the same standard as the rest of the development, such as having the same access to garden and play spaces.
- Drive higher standards in housebuilding by strengthening Building Standards powers and empowering local councils to refuse planning permission for developers with a track record of building sub-standard homes.
- Introduce a new universal Scottish Accessible Home standard which will require all new homes to meet high minimum disability accessibility standards. We will also require a minimum number of homes in new developments to have special facilities such as accessible wet rooms and hoists, and make it easier for people to get help to adapt their homes to make them accessible.
- Make it easier for people who live in tenements and other housing blocks to handle repairs, maintenance and energy efficiency improvements by reviewing tenement housing laws; making owners’ associations a legal requirement; and establishing a loan fund for owners’ associations to carry out essential works.
- Remove licences from poor-performing property factors.
- Work with campaigners, residents and local authorities to deliver fully funded repairs or rehousing for those affected by RAAC, ensuring that no resident faces costs or housing insecurity as a result.
Ending Homelessness
- Underpin all our work to prevent homelessness with a statutory target to end homelessness by 2040 and a Housing First approach.
- Provide guidance and funding to ensure the new duties for public bodies to prevent homelessness is a reality, so that public bodies can pro-actively support people to avoid becoming homeless.
- Provide secure, long-term funding for Rapid Rehousing Transition Plans and for proven measures like Housing First, which provides people with complex and multiple barriers a secure tenancy alongside voluntary, high quality support services.
- Urgently prioritise funding more and better temporary accommodation. The right to temporary accommodation and the right to not stay in unsuitable temporary accommodation for more than 7 days are not currently upheld in all cases.
- Develop statutory action plans for groups that are most at risk of homelessness, encompassing actions such as making the domestic abuse Fund to Leave permanent, so that financial hardship will never be the reason for people to stay in an abusive home.
- Consult on requiring social landlords to rent a specific percentage of their homes to homeless households.
- Press the UK Government to reverse its cruel cuts to Housing Benefits, including to its method of working out how much Housing Benefit should be paid, which is driving homelessness.