Struggling to buy a house, pay your mortgage or rent? Bad politics comes with a price

For many young people, getting on the housing ladder can seem like a distant dream (Picture: Jeff J Mitchell) | Getty Images

Scotland’s housing crisis is no longer a problem confined to the poorest third of Scots and the often-struggling communities they live in. It has become a national failure affecting millions of people and undermining the country’s ambitions for fairness, prosperity and net zero.

Over the past decade, homelessness has risen, rents have become increasingly unaffordable, and home ownership has slipped further out of reach for younger Scots. What was once seen as a series of separate pressures has now become a full-scale ‘housing polycrisis’.

Yet despite repeated declarations of a housing emergency, Scottish politics still appears trapped between strong passions and poor reasoning. Ministers continue to promise that tougher regulation and more public spending will solve the problem, but there remains little evidence of a coherent long-term mission for Scotland’s housing system. That is the central weakness facing the new parliament.

READ MORE: Collaboration key if More Homes Scotland is to tackle country’s housing crisis

Passion but no strategy

The David Hume Institute has long argued that housing policy requires fundamental reform. Hume himself observed that human behaviour is shaped by a combination of “passion” and “reason”. In politics, however, they are not enough. Governments also need a clear mission and the ability to deliver it.

Scottish Governments of every political colour have shown genuine passion for improving housing. But passion without strategy has produced disappointing results. Since the abolition of Scottish Homes two decades ago, housing policy has steadily lost direction.

Ministers have too often treated housing policy as feeding a once-major spending silo, rather than managing Scotland’s housing as a set of regional, rural and neighbourhood systems whose outcomes shape economic growth, social wellbeing and cohesion, and environmental progress. Policy offers are strong on virtue-signalling, weak on making the housing connections that deliver progress.

That misunderstanding matters. Housing policy is not simply about building more homes through a government department. It’s about coordinating planning, taxation, infrastructure, labour supply, transport and economic development across every level of government. Scotland cannot solve its housing crisis through disconnected interventions and ideological point-scoring.

READ MORE: A new homeless family every 15 minutes: How SNP have fuelled Scotland's housing crisis

Unintended consequences

Yet much of what appeared in party election manifestos suggested more of the same. Policies that have already failed are being recycled. Poorly designed rental market measures risk discouraging investment in new housing supply. Schemes aimed at helping first-time buyers have often pushed house prices even higher, worsening affordability for the next generation. Meanwhile, the potential role of the non-profit housing sector remains neglected.

Perhaps the only genuinely radical proposal on the table is the creation of a new national housing agency, More Homes Scotland. Even that, however, will achieve little without wider reform.

Current housing budgets are already insufficient to meet projected need, and the Scottish Fiscal Commission has warned that real capital spending is likely to fall over the next five years. The political reality is stark: Scotland will not spend its way out of this crisis.

A further challenge for the new parliament is recognising that the housing crisis is not solely the product of devolved decisions. Wider UK fiscal and monetary policies continue to shape borrowing costs, investment decisions and housing affordability across Scotland.

That makes cooperation between governments essential, not optional. A more mature housing strategy would involve regular coordination between Westminster and Holyrood on how tax, interest rates, welfare and infrastructure spending interact with Scotland’s housing policies.

Equally, Holyrood must resist the temptation to govern housing through short-term political gestures designed for headlines rather than outcomes. Scotland has become trapped in a cycle of announcing initiatives without building the institutional capacity needed to sustain delivery over decades. Stable housing systems are not created through annual spending rounds or symbolic interventions; they are built through consistent governance, long-term planning and cross-sector collaboration.

READ MORE: SNP: Renters will get first refusal if landlords put homes up for sale

Reform council tax

That means Holyrood must govern differently. The new parliament needs less theatrical conflict and more collaborative policymaking. Real progress will require cross-party agreement on reforms that governments have long avoided because they create political winners and losers.

Reforming council tax and wider housing taxation must return to the agenda. Scotland also needs faster and more flexible housing supply systems, better regional planning, and stronger coordination between housing investment and infrastructure spending. Labour shortages in construction must be addressed, while off-site manufacturing and modern building methods should become national priorities.

None of this can be achieved through silo politics. Housing policy must be connected directly to Scotland’s wider economic and social missions. One practical step would be for Holyrood to establish a Housing Committee capable of scrutinising how every ministerial portfolio affects housing.

Equally important is the need to devolve more power away from Edinburgh. Strategic decisions are still excessively centralised within Holyrood and Victoria Quay. Scotland’s successful City Deals demonstrate that local and regional partnerships can deliver better coordination between housing, infrastructure and economic development (although some display an enduring disregard for how housing outcomes impact economic growth).

A more localised system would help address one of the long-standing weaknesses in housing investment: funding is still disproportionately shaped by historic patterns of decline rather than future areas of economic growth.

More Homes Scotland could help address some of these failures – but only if it avoids becoming civil service bureaucracy and employs experts from the private and non-profit development sectors. It should not attempt to dominate local delivery. Instead, it should act as a coordinating body that supports regions, councils and communities in developing housing solutions tailored to local needs.

The danger facing the new parliament is clear. MSPs may arrive at Holyrood full of energy and ambition, but without a serious rethink of housing governance, they are likely to repeat the mistakes of the last decade.

Scotland does not lack political passion on housing. What it lacks is a reasoned national mission capable of turning that passion into lasting results.

Professor Duncan Maclennan, University of Glasgow, has been working with the David Hume Institute on housing issues