Aberdeen councillors declare housing emergency
The local authority have now passed a cross-party motion for an action plan to tackle rising homelessness and increase housing supply.
In May this year the Scottish government declared a national housing emergency, recognising their extremely limited supply of affordable homes. Now, councillors in Aberdeen have followed suit.
The local authority is set to write to the Scottish and UK governments to request support after they have come up with a new plan to dig themselves out of this situation. The plan, so far, has been backed by a number of housing and homelessness organisations.
Shelter Scotland, the leading homelessness charity, have published new figures showing the number of children in temporary accommodation in the city had more than doubled in the last year.
Assistant director of the charity, Gordon MacRae, said: ‘How do we go from a situation now where hundreds if not thousands of people in the city are denied the dignity of a safe, secure affordable home and how do we get to a place in the future where that basic human right isn’t just a privilege of some.’
Hundreds of homes in Aberdeen have potentially been affected by dangerous concrete and are set to be torn down and rebuilt. Reinforced autoclaved aerated concrete (RAAC) was identified in more than 500 council and private properties earlier this year.
However, MacRae has claimed that the RAAC situation in Aberdeen is not a cause of the city’s housing emergency.
With the city’s housing crisis in mind, the council are now asking the Scottish government to review its decision to cut the Affordable Housing Supply Programme allocation to Aberdeen by 24% for 2024/25.
Image: Laurentiu Morariu
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