Scottish housing market heading for homelessness crisis

Scotland needs a coherent long-term plan to create a housing policy that reflects the needs and demands of its changing population or cases of homelessness will increase, the country’s largest estate and letting agent has warned.

Edinburgh-based DJ Alexander, which is also part of The Lomond Group, believes that the Scottish property market is now at a crossroads and that successive government policy has failed to keep up with an ever-changing demographic.

COHERENT

David Alexander, Chief Executive of DJ Alexander Scotland, says: “What we need is a coherent long-term plan to create a housing policy that reflects the needs and demands of a diverse and changing population.”

In 1993 37.5% of Scots lived in social housing; 7.0% rented privately and 55.5% were owner occupied.

By 2020 some 23% were living in social housing; 14.9% were in the private rented sector and 58.2% were owner-occupiers.

In terms of actual numbers there were 822,000 social houses in 1993 and there were 608,000 in 2020 – a drop of 214,000 or 7,642 homes each year for the last 28 years.

And since the SNP came to power in 2007 there has been an increase of just 1,000 homes in the social sector.

These figures highlight the failure of successive governments’ on both sides of the Border.”

Alexander adds: “These figures highlight the failure of successive governments’ on both sides of the Border to build sufficient social housing to meet demand and the consequent growth of the private rented sector to fill this gap over the last three decades.”

CONCERN

“My concern is where are the hundreds of thousands of tenants in the sector going to live in the future?” he goes on to say.

“Without the private rented sector there will be no homes for foreign workers, for temporary residents, for those studying or on placement.

“With a growing social housing waiting list the demand is simply becoming impossible to meet and I believe that if we don’t have a sensible and workable approach in the next year or so then there is a very real risk of a rise in homelessness in Scotland.”