UNISON Scotland Evidence to the Scottish Parliament Infrastructure and Capital Investment Committee on the Private Housing (Tenancies) (Scotland) Bill
Scotland faces a massive crisis in the availability, the cost and the quality of our housing. There are more than 150,000 people on local authority housing waiting lists across Scotland in 2015, a level over 30% higher than in 2004.5 Yet the social housing stock has declined. Shelter has estimated that we need to build at least 12,000 affordable houses each year to meet current and future need.
UNISON Scotland believes that housing has been left to the market for too long. The market has failed to deliver. The private owned and private rented sectors cannot address the shortage. This housing crisis requires a massive programme of social housing investment from the public sector. In our policy paper Making Homes for a Fairer Scotland we outlined a new housing programme for Scotland and we have showed how this could be funded, using some of the assets represented by public sector pension funds in our publication Funding and Building the Homes Scotland Needs.