Scottish landlords sound the alarm after social housing starts hit almost 30-year low

The figures come just over three months since the Scottish government unveiled its Housing Emergency Action Plan, which committed an extra £4.9bn for affordable housing over the next four years. 

However, the SFHA said at the time that “at least” £8.2bn was needed to tackle the housing crisis. 

Shelter has previously blamed the sharp drop in social housebuilding on what it called “brutal back-to-back funding cuts” in 2023-24 and 2024-25. The charity said the cuts reduced the affordable homes budget by 37%.

The latest figures show just 6,582 social and affordable homes – including shared ownership – were built under the Scottish government’s Affordable Housing Supply Programme in the year to September 2025.

SFHA research, in partnership with CIH Scotland and Shelter Scotland, suggests the country needs to build more than 15,000 social and affordable homes annually.

Official figures published in September showed a record number of households in Scotland living in temporary homeless accommodation.

Alison Watson, Shelter’s Scotland director, said: “Affordable housing delivery across Scotland remains too slow, too little and too late for the thousands of children spending Christmas without a home.”

However, Màiri McAllan, the Scottish housing secretary, pointed to more positive signs in the figures, based on the latest quarter. 

In the three months to September, affordable housing approvals rose by 61% to 1,431. And affordable housing starts – including shared ownership – increased by nearly a fifth to 1,209 in the latest quarter. 

Ms McAllan said: “The increase in approvals is the highest level for the time period since 2021 and shows our work to instil confidence and investment is working after years of headwinds due to Covid, Brexit and inflation.”

She said the government had helped deliver more than 141,000 affordable homes since 2007, with over 101,000 of these for social rent.

But she added: “Despite these successes, there is still much to do and I am determined that we now step up our efforts.”

Across all tenures, the figures revealed that 18,347 homes were built in the first nine months of this year, an 8% drop year on year. Starts fell by 5% to 14,846.