Scotland’s housing and homelessness crisis has intensified. In May 2024, the Scottish government declared a ‘national housing emergency’. To date, at least 13 of Scotland’s 32 councils have followed suit, including its largest three councils Glasgow, Edinburgh and Fife.
Latest statistics from the Scottish government, and charities in Scotland, for 2024-25, document:
• 34,067 households assessed as homeless or threatened with homelessness. These include 15,046 children. Shelter Scotland records a total of 40,688 homelessness applications.
• As of March 2025, there were 17,240 households trapped in temporary accommodation, a 6% increase since March 2024. This number has risen by over 7,000 households since 2015 and is the highest number on record. 10,180 children live in temporary accommodation, and couples with children have the longest to wait for permanent housing, on average 386 days.
• The charity Independent Age reports that more than 1,195 people aged over 65 registered as homeless in the last year – a 34% rise compared with five years ago – and that 55 of these older people had experienced rough sleeping in the past three months.
• There are around 110,000 households on the waiting lists for social housing, amounting to more than 250,000 people which includes more than 90,000 children.
Shelter Scotland reported at least 16,485 instances in 2024-25 of local authorities breaking the law by failing to provide temporary accommodation, which is more than double the instances compared to 2023-24 (12,800 of these instances were in Glasgow which saw the biggest increase). Shelter reports that the temporary accommodation which is provided is ‘often legally unsuitable’ – for example, lacking suitable cooking facilities or breaking overcrowding laws – with at least 7,850 reported cases of homeless households experiencing this in the last year, up 6% from the previous year. The homeless are forced to take legal action against the council, with Shelter’s help and legal aid, if it is granted.
Far from supporting grassroots efforts to provide shelter, Glasgow’s SNP-run council is attacking them, citing failure to comply with planning policies in its attempts to evict the Homeless Project Scotland from its city centre premises, which provides nightly shelter for around 30 people.
The Scottish government has been responsible for its own housing policies and legislation since 1999. It is on course to miss its 2032 target for 110,000 new ‘affordable’ homes to be built, including at least 70% (77,000) at social rent. As of June 2025, 29,680 ‘affordable’ homes had been completed but building has slowed and stalled with the number of new approvals at their lowest since 2013 and completions at their lowest since 2015. Shelter reports that Scotland needs a minimum of 15,693 new social homes a year just to stop homelessness rising. Only 6,851 ‘affordable’ homes of any kind were completed in the year to the end of June 2025.
In this context, Housing Secretary Màiri McAllan’s claim that the new Housing (Scotland) Act 2025, which passed into law on 6 November 2025, is ‘groundbreaking’ and ‘will revolutionise homelessness prevention and ensure rents are kept affordable’ is not just insulting but deluded. Key measures included in the Act, such as rent control, cannot be implemented without further consultations and regulation.
With anger building, the British ruling class is ramping up its attempts to lay blame for the housing crisis with immigrants and refugees. The Home Office plans to move around 300 single male asylum seekers to the disused Cameron army barracks in Inverness, which is undergoing a £1.3m refurbishment for this purpose. This is part of the attempt to cut the cost of providing temporary accommodation (in hotels and flats) for those in the asylum system, while also isolating them from the wider working class. The ruling class’s focus on migrants is part of a continuous campaign to scapegoat those most in need. Widespread homelessness has always existed under capitalism and has never been caused by migration; rather migrants are used to excuse the speculative racket of house construction for profit.
Capitalism’s blatant disregard for human life is not the fault of any single person or political party, but all of the bourgeois parties (Labour, SNP, Tory, Greens etc) that support it. Homelessness is systematic injustice. The struggle against increasing homelessness, and for decent housing for all, demands a united class struggle through a fight for socialism.
Dominic Mulgrew
