12,000 More New Homes Needed To Solve Crisis

The need for affordable housing in Scotland is double what is currently being delivered.

A major housing charity is calling for 12,000 new homes to be built every year for the next 5 years, to solve what it's calling the 'housing crisis'.

Around 2700 new low-cost homes are due to be built in Fife by May 2017.

Shelter Scotland have released the report, which is the result of the first in-depth investigation into Scotland’s total housing need in the last 10 years. It puts the cost of the proposed housing programme at an average of at least £700 million each year over five years

A team from the independent Centre for Regional Economic and Social Research at Sheffield Hallam, Sheffield University and University of St Andrews, who compiled the report, found that the need and demand for affordable housing far outstrips supply in Scotland.

Graeme Brown, director of Shelter Scotland, said: "The 12,000-a-year target for new affordable homes is the minimum level required to tackle Scotland’s housing crisis.
 
"We are calling on all political parties in Scotland to acknowledge there is a crisis by making the building of new affordable homes a priority in their manifestos for the forthcoming Holyrood elections and use the 12,000 target as a benchmark for their ambitions.
 
"Politics is about making choices and we have simply got to do more to reduce homelessness in Scotland.  A housebuilding programme on this scale would bring real hope of a home to the thousands of people in Scotland without a suitable affordable home and also be a major boost to jobs and the economy."