The authors of a report published last year, making the case for building 12,000 affordable homes a year in Scotland for the rest of the decade, complained government rhetoric over house building is rarely matched by action.
Shelter Scotland, the Chartered Institute of Housing Scotland and the Scottish Federation of Housing Associations put forward the convincing, but by now well-rehearsed, arguments in favour of large-scale affordable house building programmes.
They signed of the foreword to the report with the rallying call: "Let’s get on with it!"
In North Lanarkshire, at least, it seems the council was listening. The authority has unveiled plans to expand its already ambitious house building programme by a further 1,000 properties. If approved, the plan will see 1,800 new council houses delivered over the next decade, in the biggest project of its kind that Scotland has seen in a generation.
The need for such action has become clear. The case that new housing can reduce poverty and inequality, improve health, boost skills, provide jobs and stimulate the economy has been made as, for the first time since perhaps the 1960s, new housing has become a prominent topic of national debate.
Yet, it remains the case that nationally, we are simply not building enough. Margaret Thatcher's totemic Right to Buy policy was positive in some ways, placing the independence and pride that home ownership brings within the reach of thousands. But many former council homes are now not being lovingly cared for by former tenants but instead left to decay in the hands of private landlords, exploiting a rigged market in which home ownership is an unobtainable dream to the very section of society that Right to Buy was, ostensibly, designed to help.
An inevitable result of a lack of inclination or desire to replace the homes sold off was that council housing stock was decimated, leaving us playing catch up.
There were 15,000 new homes of any type built in 2014, 10,000 fewer than a decade previously, before the financial crisis hit and devastated private housebuilders.
Just six new council houses were built under the Labour-led Holyrood administration in the three years to 2006, a figure the SNP likes to cite when its own record is called into question. But in the same period, more than 11,500 housing association properties were constructed and since then, pressures have increased as a result of a rising, and more elderly, population.
In the three years to 2014, with the nationalists in a majority administration, the record was barely more impressive, with around 12,700 homes coming on stream. It is action, rather than petty point-scoring and playing with numbers, that Scotland now needs. The SNP has pledged 50,000 new affordable homes over the current parliament and this, as a minimum, must be delivered.
The benefits of a significant programme of house building will be felt not only among the tens of thousands on social housing waiting lists – it is linked intrinsically linked to a wide range of other policy areas. Homes for Scotland estimates four jobs are supported for every home built, with opportunities for apprenticeships, warmer homes will benefit the environment, more affordable housing would take cash out of the pockets of already well-off landlords and boost the spending power of the masses.
In other words, building more homes is a no-brainer. North Lanarkshire has set an example others must follow.
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