Scotland’s housing emergency – For a mass council house building programme

Matt Dobson

The SNP government, in May, declared a national housing emergency. 10,000 children in Scotland are in temporary accommodation. Homelessness applications are up 10%. Rents in the private sector have increased by 6.7% on average in 12 months.

Paisley, with a rising student population and tenants who can’t afford to live in Glasgow moving in, is the highest at 20%.

Housing Associations and councils are also increasing rents. There is also less housing being built despite massive demand.

Housing Association new build starts are the lowest since 1988 under Thatcher. Private sector home construction is also the lowest it’s been since the pandemic.

A whole new generation is forced to live with their parents into their thirties. who is responsible Obviously the Tories have cut the Scottish Governments capital budget year on year. Private landlords are profiteering.

The SNP/Green government, before it collapsed, cut the “affordable housing” budget by £200 million. The SNP in government is now correctly calling on an incoming Starmer government to reverse the capital budget cuts. But that isn’t enough!

They and local councils, including Scottish Labour authorities, could have linked this demand to setting no cuts budgets demanding back the billions stolen in cuts from Westminster and Holyrood and mobilised a mass campaign with the trade unions, tenants and the wider working class including struggling mortgage payers.

The socialist Militant Labour council in Liverpool in the 1980s pursued such a fighting strategy, defying Thatcher, clearing slums, stopping cuts and built council houses and public facilities, creating jobs.

The rent control measures introduced by the SNP and Greens, to much fanfare in the private sector, ending soon, barely had any impact.

Any control on rents had to be tied into a real socialist housing plan. In reality a mass publicly funded democratic council house building and allocation programme is required, comparable in scale to the post war situation.

This could include the renovation of existing property and compulsory purchases from the private sector.

If housing associations can’t afford to build low rent high quality accommodation they need to open the books to tenant and trade union scrutiny and be brought back under democratic public control. Ultimately the question of housing has to be linked with socialist societal change.

We can only finance, plan and own the housing we need by taking over the major parts of the economy under working-class control.

This includes socialist nationalisation of the banks, finance and construction. A socialist government could offer secure mortgages through a nationalised banking system to stop homeowners currently having their finances decimated by interest rates being evicted.

We cannot rely on the main parties in Scotland, many of whose MPs, MSPs and councillors are landlords to solve the housing emergency.

As well as fighting trade unions and tenants organisations we need a political voice.

Socialist Party Scotland through the Scottish Trade Unionist and Socialist Coalition is standing in the forthcoming general election on these policies and raising the need for a new mass workers party based on the trade union’s.