A family sleeping in the living room should shame a city that knows how to build homes
Glasgow's leaders admit overcrowding is getting worse. The answer is not to choose between the homeless and the overcrowded, but to build far more family homes, faster.
High-rise flats in Glasgow. Councillors say there are not enough homes, particularly larger family homes. · Photograph: Paul McIlroy (CC BY-SA 2.0)
A mother sleeping in her living room while her two teenagers share the only bedroom. That was the picture painted at Glasgow City Council this week – and the most striking thing was not the story itself, but how familiar it sounded to everyone in the room.
Councillor Robert Mooney asked whether overcrowding was getting worse. Council leader Ricky Bell did not hesitate: "Yes, it is getting worse." It was an honest answer, and it deserves credit. But honesty is only the start.
An impossible choice
The council's housing convener, Ruairi Kelly, explained the logic. When there are not enough homes to go around, those with no home at all – in B&Bs and temporary accommodation – must come first. Families who at least have a roof over their heads, however cramped, fall down the list.
That is a defensible decision. Nobody would argue that a family in a hotel room should wait behind a family in a one-bedroom flat. But it means the system is no longer really about meeting need. It is about rationing scarcity, and the people at the back of the queue are teenagers doing homework on their beds and parents who have given up their own bedroom.
Overcrowding is not a minor problem
Overcrowding is too often treated as an inconvenience compared with homelessness. It is not. Cramped homes affect children's sleep, their schoolwork and their mental health. They put strain on relationships. In the worst cases, they push families towards the very homelessness the system is trying to prevent.
What needs to change
Mr Bell says the council is trying its "absolute best" to build homes as quickly as possible but needs more money from the Scottish Government. He is right that the scale of the challenge is beyond the city's own resources. Ministers should treat Glasgow's housing emergency as exactly that, with funding to match.
But the city also has a role. The plans approved this week for 33 family homes on a long-vacant site in Possilpark show what is possible. Glasgow has a large amount of vacant and derelict land. Each site brought back into use with three and four-bedroom homes is one less family sleeping in the living room.
Families cannot wait
The mother Councillor Mooney met has been told her only option is to find someone willing to swap homes. That is not a housing strategy. It is an admission that, for now, she is on her own.
Glasgow built its way out of a housing crisis before. It needs to find that ambition again – and quickly.