The Housing Emergency Is Caused by Political Failure – Not Refugees
9 July 2025
The housing crisis is due to systemic failure, not people from refugee backgrounds. Blaming vulnerable groups such as the poor or refugees risks division and overlooks decades of underinvestment and poor housing policy.
Glasgow is facing a housing emergency. With record numbers of homelessness applications and over 6,000 households in temporary accommodation, the crisis touches every part of the city.
Yet refugees are being blamed for a housing shortage they did not create. This narrative is false and dangerous.
Positive Action in Housing supports over 4,000 service users each year, most of whom live in Glasgow and are from refugee and migrant backgrounds.
Every day, we see how the shortage of affordable housing impacts their ability to secure safe, settled accommodation and sustain tenancies. Many are living with the trauma of displacement, yet they show remarkable resilience as they try to rebuild their lives in our city.
We understand the need to plan for growing demand and to make best use of limited housing resources.
However, we are deeply concerned refugees are being singled out in discussions around the housing emergency.
Framing the poor, in this case refugees, as a source of pressure risks reinforcing a narrative that they are responsible for the housing crisis.
In the current political climate, where public discourse around refugees is already highly charged, this risks stoking racism towards some of the most vulnerable people in our communities.
The housing emergency is not the result of people fleeing war or persecution. It is the result of a systemic failure in housing policy and provision – decades of underinvestment in affordable housing, chronic shortages in social housing stock, and national policy choices that have prioritised short-term measures, such as costly asylum hotel contracts, over long-term investment in homes and communities.
These failures have left people from all backgrounds – including white Scottish households, settled minority ethnic communities and Ukrainians displaced by war – increasingly reliant on temporary accommodation.
It is vital that we frame the housing emergency in a way that reflects this reality: a citywide housing shortage affecting everyone, rather than suggesting that one group’s need comes at the expense of another’s.
Only by doing so can we maintain social cohesion and avoid the scapegoating of refugees and migrants for a crisis they did not create.
We call on housing leaders, politicians, policymakers and the media to recognise the systemic roots of this crisis and to help shape a narrative that brings communities together, rather than driving them apart.