Empty homes should be brought back into use

The Scottish Green’s vision for housing is for good-quality homes that are affordable to buy, rent and heat. There should be more social housing, better control of rents, and better management in the private sector.

If elected, Green councillors will work to bring Scotland’s 27,000 empty homes back into use and support new social rented homes to be built each year – we need at least 12,000 across Scotland each year just to meet population growth and replace older housing.

We will prioritise new housing that is affordable, low-carbon, built on brownfield sites and connected to local services. To help deliver housing and reduce land speculation we will support proposals for a local‘vacant land levy’.

We will support action to drive up space standards, designing houses that are easy to adapt for independent living, help people who rent create a stable home, support sharing information about good letting agencies and landlords, support action against bad landlords and letting agents and push for rent controls to limit rent rises which push people out of their home.

We will also investigate funding opportunities to support new housing cooperatives, bringing rental property into shared management, campaign to prioritise energy efficiency of existing houses, creating warm homes, reducing fuel bills and tackling fuel poverty.

Finally we will help homeowners make homes wind and watertight with a trusted not-for-profit service to manage major repairs, and explore ways to help with costs of repairs and explore ways of taking into social ownership facilities like care homes and student housing where their owners cannot continue to manage them.