Roz Foyer

The motion at the trade union body’s annual congress this week highlights the shortage of social housing, the out-of-control cost of rent in the private sector, and the continued failure of local homelessness services to meet their obligations.

The STUC joins four Scottish councils and CIH Scotland in declaring a housing emergency and calling on the Scottish Government to drive up investment in social housing and properly fund local services.

STUC general secretary Roz Foyer said: “Scotland is in the grip of a housing and homeless emergency with workers struggling to access affordable housing.

“Our Congress, representative of 550,000 workers has made it clear that we can no longer be idle. With £200 million cut from the housing budget and councils at breaking point due to a lack of investment and social housing stock, the STUC is making direct representations to the Scottish Government to stand by our movement, and workers across the country, caught in the midst of this housing emergency.”

Welcoming the announcement, Shelter Scotland director, Alison Watson, said: “I’m delighted that today the trade union movement has acknowledged the housing emergency and called for action from politicians.

“Cuts to the housing budget provoked widespread dismay because people recognise that the housing emergency is devastating communities right across the country.

“Decades of poor political choices and chronic underinvestment in social housing are the root cause the current situation and the only way to get us out it is to reverse that trend.

“Fundamentally, the fight against poverty and homelessness can’t be won if we don’t fix our broken and biased housing system and do that, we need social homes.

“It’s time for our politicians to accept that if they want to build a fairer Scotland, they need to build social homes.”

The declaration comes as analysis from Shelter Scotland showed that almost half of people in Scotland (47%) live in an area where the local authority does not have a fully functioning homelessness service.

The Scottish Housing Regulator has said two local authorities in Scotland are experiencing ‘systemic failure’, while a further eight are at a heightened risk of failure. Combined these local authorities cover 47% of Scotland’s population.

Shelter Scotland said the issues facing council homelessness services are a result of a failure to adequately invest in social housing and the consistent underfunding of local authorities.

Speaking from the STUC’s congress, Shelter Scotland assistant director Gordon MacRae said: “It is shameful that half of people in Scotland live in an area where the local homelessness service is either already broken or at breaking point.

“This is the inevitable consequence of poor political choices; a repeated failure to properly invest in social homes, stripping councils of the resources they need to do their jobs, and more than a decade of austerity.

“The STUC is the latest body to formally declare a housing emergency, and the message to politicians couldn’t be clearer; you can’t win the fight against poverty if you won’t fix a housing system which is failing people up and down the country.

“That means properly funding local services and ultimately delivering the social housing that Scotland so desperately needs.”