If Scotland wants to fix its various crises, it needs to start with housing |
Scotland’s housing emergency is more than a shortage of homes – it’s a crisis shaping health, jobs and communities. Damian Dempsey says affordable housing must be the cornerstone of a fairer future.
Across the country, local councils are stretched to breaking point as interlinked problems, from poor mental health to staff shortages and the rising cost of living, stack up. Yet in every discussion about what’s going wrong, one issue sits stubbornly at the centre: the lack of good, affordable homes.
That reality came through clearly during a series of “Afternoon Tea and Policy” workshops hosted by the University of the West of Scotland-Oxfam Partnership which brought together charities, housing associations, businesses and local government. Jointly, they considered how more could be done to tackle some of Renfrewshire’s toughest challenges around the increases in the cost-of-living, health and social care, and employment and learning. What emerged was strikingly consistent: the pressures facing local communities are the same ones echoing across Scotland – and housing lies at the root of most of them.
It was also clear that, while many wicked problems exist, at least as many ideas for tackling them also exist and organisations and communities are already doing a great amount of work around these issues.
The workshops highlighted........