Housing is a human right and ensuring that every household has an adequate house is one of the key obligations on the Scottish Government and Local Councils. 

In responding to the work of the Social Renewal Advisory Board late in 2020 ALACHO recommended that the Scottish Government should carry out a full audit of the extent to which that right is being achieved as the first step in developing a more comprehensive policy framework to “progressively realise” the human right to adequate housing.  Following on from that recommendation we commissioned Gillian Young of Newhaven Research ltd to take an initial look at how “adequate” could be defined and measured.

That report is published here.  We are consciously calling it a “can opener”, it is intended to move the debate on the human right to housing firmly into the field of policy, programmes and resource allocations.

What we found is that answering these questions is difficult because we simply lack the information we need to understand the situation. But based on what we do have, there are many families, owners as well as tenants, who may be living in homes that fall short of meeting their rights, including those with disabilities, those facing domestic abuse, and many families struggling to pay for their home each month or to keep themselves warm in winter.