You Cannot End a Housing Emergency Without Building Social Housing

The Housing Minister, Shirley-Anne Somerville is right to challenge false claims that refugees are being given preferential access to social housing.

Scotland’s housing emergency was created by decades of political failure to build sufficient homes.

Scotland has too few social homes, rising homelessness and growing dependence on temporary accommodation.

At September 2025, 18,092 households were in temporary accommodation in Scotland, including 10,480 children. There were 33,006 open homelessness cases.

Refugee and leave-to-remain households accounted for 16% of homelessness applications between April and September 2025. The other 84% did not. Refugees remain predominantly at the sharp end of the housing emergency. But they tend not to have settled homes. 

In Glasgow, around 2,700 of 8,445 homelessness applications in 2024-25 were from refugee households. That is significant additional pressure. But still not the cause of the emergency.

The underlying problem is a shortage of suitable permanent social housing.

That is where the Scottish Government must be held to account.

The Minister points to 146,034 affordable homes delivered over 17 years since 2007.  But “affordable housing” does not necessarily reduce the queues of homeless people. For those trapped in temporary accommodation, the decisive question is how many permanent social homes are actually becoming available.

In 2025-26, only 3,774 new social homes were completed across Scotland.

The UK Government is responsible for an asylum system that can push newly recognised refugees into homelessness. The Scottish Government is responsible for housing policy, social housing investment and homelessness strategy.

Both matter.

But the solution is not to keep arguing about refugees.

It is to build and acquire enough permanent social rented homes to move homeless households out of temporary accommodation.

You cannot rapidly rehouse people into houses that do not exist.