Edinburgh’s Housing Emergency – 2 years on so what next?

For about two years now Edinburgh has been officially declared  (by the City Council) as having a housing emergency, or crisis as others prefer to call it. Twelve other Councils in Scotland have declared the same and the Scottish Government last year stated similar for the country as a whole.

Five years ago the Edinburgh Poverty Commission (EPC) made recommendations on how best to address and reduce the experience of poverty in the City. The high cost of private rented housing and lack of social housing in the city are cited as key factors for the level of poverty – circumstances considered likely to increase if not tackled properly.

As someone who has spent over 45 years working in (and now retired from) the housing delivery world I can safely say that the issues faced today are more challenging than at any time I can recall.

The lack of social housing to rent, the high (and increasingly unaffordable) cost of private housing to rent, the difficulties for first time buyers to purchase, and most tellingly the continued high levels of homelessness and people stuck in (often very unsuitable) temporary accommodation in the City is the clear evidence in front of us.

It is indeed a crisis for growing numbers of people, including anyone waiting for a social rented home, key workers struggling to afford to rent on the open market, children caught up in often insecure and unsuitable temporary accommodation, or people unable to return home from hospital due to having unsuitable housing which does not meet their health and support needs.

Over the past 5 years, a mere 2,051 new homes for social rent have been built in the City. This is the lowest level for many decades, equating to only about 20% of what is needed each year. This is mainly because Edinburgh has, for over 20 years now, continued to receive a completely inadequate allocation of grant funding from the Government for social housing. This has been a political choice made by successive governments.

We have also witnessed a relatively new form of student accommodation, known as purpose built student accommodation (PBSA), being built in the City. Too often this is being done much to the concern of many communities who would far prefer to see more social housing being built instead, feel that there is already too much student housing concentrated in certain areas, and that the cost of many PBSA schemes is so high it leaves students with very little left to live on.

So why has more not been achieved to improve the housing outcomes of so many different households in the City and particularly for the most vulnerable?

The Council will explain it is doing its best in the circumstances of restricted resources, much of which is set by the Scottish and UK governments. This however fails to convince the Scottish Housing Regulator who recently concluded that the homelessness service in Edinburgh is suffering from systemic failure.

The Scottish Government will explain that with more resources going into the system announced recently and new legislation passed this year which proposes to limit the ability of private landlords to increase rents each year, the situation will improve. Exactly how the new rent restrictions will operate is subject to further detailed guidance but which will not cover mid market rent landlords, students living in PBSA, or tenants of private Build to Rent projects – much to the dismay of Living Rent who have been campaigning for limits to rent rises which should apply consistently throughout the private renting sector.

While welcoming the recent legislative changes and increase in government funding many people and organisations working in the delivery of new and existing housing, believe these to be piecemeal and insufficient measures to ensure a meaningful improvement in the housing circumstances for those in greatest need in particular.

It has always struck me that housing is a complicated business. Not understanding the complexities including the linkages between policies regarding health, social care, the environment, taxation, social security, planning, education, transport, culture and leisure is to miss the point. If you seek to treat or improve housing outcomes it is far better to do so recognising that it is part of a wider system including these other sectors.

It is very timely therefore to read a recently published report by Professor Duncan Maclennan and Jocelyne Fleming for the David Hume Institute, “Prosperity begins at home: disruptions to improve Scotland’s housing system”, September 2025.

Their starting point is that what we have is not so much an emergency in housing but more of a “polycrisis”. This is because what we are faced with is multiple, distinct and simultaneous crises interacting in ways which amplify the effects and create combined effects which are more severe than the sum of its parts. The main point of the authors is that housing has never been taken seriously as a key element of the economic infrastructure of society, as it should and now needs to be. Housing has for too long been treated largely as a stand alone issue with budget decisions taken in a silo mentality within government. Poor housing outcomes not only impact severely on peoples’ lives but also on the economy.

They argue that the current way we go about planning, taxing, resourcing and delivering housing works against economic stability, growth, productivity and impedes the delivery of a fairer, more equitable distribution of income and wealth.

There is a great deal in this report worth reading and digesting and I would recommend it be taken seriously including by all politicians of all parties. The prize for getting our housing system to work properly with good outcomes for all households is significant – improved health and well being, improved productivity, more sustainable growth, improved social inclusion and social mobility, improved environmental quality and faster shift to net zero.

Having observed the worsening housing situation in Edinburgh over recent years in particular I believe it is now time to be discussing more radical changes and particularly as all political parties are currently working on their manifesto statements for the Scottish Government elections next year.  No more tinkering with tenure specific policies which will only likely result in unintended consequences bringing growing resentment and blame calling within  key parts of the system. Business as usual will not cut it. Continuing to break the law around temporary accommodation with no apparent consequences for doing so is just not acceptable. Consigning children to further year on year experience of insecure housing is not the sign of a compassionate and just society and is simply storing up further problems for the future.

In amongst all this it is very heartening to see some extremely positive examples of what good housing looks like in Edinburgh. For example, the new social housing currently being built by CCG for Edinburgh Council in Newington (Cowan’s Close) using modern methods of construction to deliver secure, high quality, low carbon homes. This is just the kind of new housing we need to see much more of in the City. In fact another 20,000 social rented homes built over the next 10 years would be about right in order to meet both today’s and the future emerging need for social rented housing. Only then would we have about the right mix of housing tenure in the City.

Also the former naval barracks at Port Edgar are being refurbished by LAR Housing Trust to create 49 new mid market rent homes, a cafe, museum room and space for the local men’s shed group. This is a very creative reuse of an existing building and is being done using an innovative financing approach which does not include public grant subsidy. This approach should be extended much more widely in the City and indeed elsewhere in the country, for all future mid market rented housing and delivering just what many of our ‘key workers’ need.  Doing so would also enable what government funding there is for new housing to be devoted towards delivering more of the urgently needed additional social housing needed in the City in future.

Why should all this be of concern to the Cockburn Association?

Celebrating its 150th year this year, campaigning to protect and enhance the inherent physical and natural beauty of Edinburgh means that everyone needs to be living in a secure, warm home which is affordable to them. There is therefore much more campaigning and concerted actions to be undertaken to achieve this.

As the main civic organisation for the City we are keen to assist, including through hosting and participating in conversations,  in order to identify what must change as a matter or urgency and what works best to improve the housing outcomes for everyone in the City.

Keith Anderson

Member of the Cockburn Association, Policy and Development Committee

November 2025

Image: Pixabay