The Scottish Government has been accused of a “massive failure” in letting 28,000 homes stay empty while record numbers of families are made homeless.
A Freedom of Information request has uncovered that the huge number of vacant properties are lying empty, while millions of pounds are poured into low-quality temporary homes, hotels and B&Bs.
Edinburgh is the worst offender, with 3000 homes empty for six months or more.
The capital suffers most from high rents in the private sector and the number of rough sleepers has also soared. More than 5000 properties have lain empty for more than ten years.
An FoI request by the Lib Dems asked all 32 local councils how many homes were long-term vacant or empty for longer than six months. Of those, 30 councils held the data. It found:
*27,954 long-term vacant properties
*3093 in Edinburgh, 2929 in Aberdeenshire, 2801 in Glasgow and 2584 in Argyll & Bute
*1420 vacant for over a year
*2609 vacant for 5 years plus.
*5937 more than 10 years
*In 2023/24, only 579 properties were brought back into use in Glasgow– just 20 per cent of long-term vacant homes.
*In 2023/24, 71 properties were returned to use in Dum-fries & Galloway, out of 1211.
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Scottish Lib Dems housing spokesperson Paul McGarry said: “Under the SNP, there has been a massive failure to tackle Scotland’s housing crisis.
“Tens of thousands of homes are lying empty all while the number of people sleeping rough and moving between temporary accommodation shoots up to record levels.
“The SNP have made things worse by taking an axe to the housing budget and failing to build the thousands of homes they promised for social rent.
“Scottish Liberal Democrats want to bring thousands of empty homes back into use as well as building more homes and re-establishing social rent as a viable, long-term option.”
In 2023/24, 10,110 children were in temporary accommodation – the highest number since records began and double 2007 when the Nats took over
In the same year, there were 40,685 homeless applications – the highest since 2011/12.
Housing Minister Paul McLennan said: “Tackling the Housing Emergency remains an urgent matter for the Scottish Government and we are supporting local authorities to encourage them to work at a rapid pace to identify properties and bring them back into use.
“We previously announced the allocation of an additional £40m to councils to purchase properties or to bring empty social homes back into use. We will also invest a further £40m for this purpose next year. This will build on the success of our programme to enable the acquisition of existing homes, which spent more than £83 million last year and delivered almost 1,500 affordable homes.
“Since 2007 we have supported the delivery of more than 133,000 affordable homes, with more than 94,000 of those being for social rent, 40% more affordable homes per head of population than in England and 70% more than in Wales.”