Everything is Fine
Fresh out of yet another meeting about tackling the housing crisis? Tired of stakeholder community engagement seminars, bored out of your head with yet another housing survey, had enough of waiting for policy makers and legislators getting their act into gear as you see young families give up on promising lives and migrate to city or urban congestion because childcare is available there?
Image credit: Laide
In Scotland, we currently have the following groups and organisations pondering the best approach to a housing crisis that’s running away from us:
Government and Public Sector. Housing Directorate, which sets the national housing strategy ‘Housing to 2040’ and ‘More Homes’. 32 local authorities, many with Rapid Rehousing Transition Plans and delivering the Affordable Housing Supply Programme. ScotGov also have the Local Government, Housing and Planning Committee at Holyrood. In the Highlands we have HIREP the Highlands and Islands Regional Economic Partnership all working together on the National Strategy for Economic Transformation. Then add in all the various community organisations in the third sector and development trusts all raising awareness of the problem and spending valued grey matter on finding the best solutions.
ScotGov released their latest data today on how we’re tackling the housing crisis. It’s great that they release this data, but jings it’s concerning. Especially when you look at the volume of new building, particularly future social housing starts. It’s alarmingly low and will simply exacerbate both the housing and depopulation crises.
The key points of the data are:
- Affordable housing completions dropped by a severe -23% compared to the previous year, hitting the lowest level since 2014.
- Private building starts are at their lowest level since 2013, indicating significant economic headwinds or lack of investment.
- Social sector starts are at their lowest point since data collection began in 1997.
- 31,064 affordable homes have been completed towards the 110,000 target by 2032, which is great, but that target come Ne’erday is a mere six years away.
From a rural/island perspective, the severe lack of new social housing being started suggests that the essential, low-cost homes needed to reverse population decline in these areas are simply not being commissioned. In the Northwest, we have roughly 100 homes in our community-led housing developments in the pipeline, which we recognise barely scratches the surface of need.
We need to contrast all this activity and the new data with the recent European Housing Advisory Board (EHAP) report. The EU board were asked in June 2025 to create an Affordable Housing Plan, they completed and delivered the plan last month in November.
The core of their advice relevant to rural areas in Scotland outwith the Central Belt, focuses on shifting policy perspective to see housing as essential social and economic infrastructure, rather than a speculative asset as we currently do.
Key suggestions include:
- Value housing as a foundational pillar, like transport or energy grids. This aligns with the need for us in Scotland to recognise that affordable and available housing is critical for attracting and retaining a working-age population and supporting essential public services like education, health and care staff.
- Improving public transport and communications links in rural areas to ensure people can access jobs, services, and opportunities—a crucial point given the widespread connectivity and transport challenges outwith the Central Belt
- Prioritising the renovation and reuse of vacant and long-term empty properties to increase housing supply quickly without reliance on large-scale new builds.
- Expand modern construction industry in rural locations, ideally suited for off-site fabrication and modular building.
The report discourages the ‘financialisation’ of housing, where properties are treated as speculative assets, which has become a key driver of the high rate of second homes and short-term tourism lets in the Highlands and Islands.
The EHAP approach could help reduce high construction costs, improve quality and energy efficiency, and create new, year-round, skilled employment opportunities to combat depopulation over the next decade. We just need both UK and Scottish governments to fire the starting gun.
The EHAP recommendation defines ‘affordability’ by measuring lifetime running costs, quality, and energy efficiency, rather than just upfront cost or rent. This is the key factor that requires massive strategic investment in rural and island infrastructure and services to even begin to reverse demographic decline.
Just to say, this isn’t a grumble aimed at ScotGov, Highland Council or any of the multiple agencies involved in solving this crisis, we work with brilliant people who completely understand the problems, they want to see building begin too. We just need those at the top to action it.
European Housing Advisory Board Report
https://ec.europa.eu/newsroom/neb/items/910310/en
Northwest 2045
https://www.northwest2045.scot/publications
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Perhaps we could take a hint from the old Edinburgh Social Union and issue housing bonds with a moderate rate of interest. A secure investment that isn’t aimed at making unearned gains would be attractive to many people. It was what we looked for from Building Societies before they lost their way.
Some protection against financial predators would need to be built in. It would not be part of the public sector debt if secured against the properties.
20% of the Scottish population is aged 65+
16% is aged 10 or less.
The fertility rate is 1.3 children per woman
If this continues for another 20 years there will soon be plenty of empty houses and no need to build any more.
As usual John L you have managed to identify a problem but looked at it through the wrong end of the looking glass. The fact that my/our generation is living longer is great but it does pose challenges eg on health and social care. It also means that more older people are living in property, often as a widower unfortunately, which reduces the number of houses available for younger people. There are plenty of other reasons for housing shortages but the issue of more older people living longer often in bigger properties is rarely mentioned.
Ensuring we have sufficient people to staff public services and tax payers to pay for them is also going to be a major challenge especially with birthrate falling. This gap will almost inevitably need to be filled by immigrants who will themselves require housing so your longer term vacancy prediction is going to be wide of the mark as well.
The National Records of Scotland office would disagree with JohnL’s prediction of empty Scottish houses in 20 years:-
“Scotland’s population is projected to grow to 5.8 million people by the middle of 2047 according to new statistics from National Records of Scotland.
The latest report shows that, based on recent trends, people moving to Scotland would continue to fuel population increase. Statisticians project a population increase of 4.4% in the ten years from the middle of 2022. The longer-range projection to 2047 is for a 6.2% increase. Without migration, Scotland’s population would fall as deaths are projected to continue to outnumber births.”
https://www.nrscotland.gov.uk/latest-news/scotlands-population-projected-to-grow/
Maybe JohnL is aspires to a far-right utopia of zero immigration?
In which long-term case our country will indeed eventually peter out with not enough young, working people to fund John L’s pension or visit his empty street to care for the auld folk.
Wul
John L is typical of a section of society that decries not only the low birthrate but also the economic policies that require to be implemented to support families with children and help reverse this trend.
If you check his comments he rails against immigration and doesn’t believe in global warming. It appears he would prefer for Scotland’s population and the country of Scotland to decline rather than have people who do not look like him or think like him living here.
He also seems to prefer global temperatures to rise unabated , with all the implication’s this has for the human race and nature, than listen to climate scientists and admit they know more about the climate from years of research than he does.
In short JL is an old fool.
Perhaps some measures to return Airbnb houses and flats to public ownership would be good.
Public Sector having first chance to buy for instance.
The new generation of Rachmanns are snapping them up when they come on the market and it’s an opportunity wasted.
I wish buy to let mortgages had never been legalised, they are the root of many ills.
I feel like the focus on building affordable housing solely for young families to *buy* is short-sighted, and doesn’t address the root of the problem.
Firstly it is out of touch with the modern world – who goes straight from their parents’ house to buying a home and having a family these days? Young people are leaving the Highlands in droves, as they want to live normal, independent lives: moving around for jobs and study, sharing with friends, living alone or with partners, etc.
Secondly, with low wages, insecure work, and the spiralling cost of living, most of the people currently leaving the Highlands couldn’t afford to buy somewhere in their wildest dreams anyway. What is also needed – as well as properties for those financially secure enough to buy – is affordable *rental* properties of varying types/sizes to accommodate a diverse population with differing needs.
Housing association lists are several years long, everywhere – a lifetime if you’re in your late teens/early 20s. If you want a laugh, go to the Rightmove website, click on ‘properties to rent’, draw a box around the Highlands, and see what comes up. Last time I looked, there were just *two* houses available to rent outside of Inverness.
Almost like we should bring back high quality council housing eh?
I wonder what’s stopping us (from building good quality, low-cost, rented public housing)?
We know how to build houses. We know how to grow timber. We have an abundance of land. We have massive renewable energy potential. We have top-quality fresh water everywhere.
But something seems to be stopping us. I wonder what it is?