Letter: Housing shame

Despite knowing that a warm, safe home is crucial to all aspects of a child's wellbeing, we live in a Scotland where 186,000 children wake up every day in cold, damp, overcrowded and dangerous homes. This is a record which Scotland should be ashamed of.

If politicians want to make good on their promises to tackle child poverty, Shelter Scotland believes a big improvement in the quality and availability of housing children live in would make the world of difference.

A fundamental step in achieving this would be for the SNP Government to honour its manifesto pledge to build 6,000 socially-rented homes each year. As well as putting to an end the unacceptable living conditions we continue to force on our children, it would also be a fundamental step to ending child poverty and ill health.

Gordon MacRae

Shelter Scotland

South Charlotte Street

Edinburgh