Homes: Building back better

• Lots more and better quality housing is being touted in a new report as offering a wide range of 'wellbeing' benefits.

• It's part of the process of trying to influence choices after the Holyrood election next May, and also to define what it means, post-pandemic, to 'build back better'.

The battle-lines for a re-shaped economy and society are being drawn, with competing visions of what it means to 'build back better'.

That's at the same time as the attention is being sought of those writing party manifestos for the Holyrood election next year.

So this is a vital time to set out your stall if, for instance, you think we need more and better quality housing.

We're used to hearing from housebuilders about the need for more homes, and the benefit of employing people in construction.

They're making the case for a big share of public capital budgets, and also to reduce obstacles and delays in the planning system.

But a vigorous and rigorous different approach is being taken by Shelter, campaigning for the homeless.

Looking beyond the current government war footing in tackling Covid-19, it's as if echoing the post-war pledges in Britain to build 'homes fit for heroes'.

Such campaigners have noted the shift of emphasis away from an economic growth-first agenda, notably in the SNP's leadership, towards an economy aimed at improvement in 'wellbeing'.

Nicola Sturgeon is a former housing minister

Leading economist Stephen Boyle, late of the Royal Bank of Scotland as well as advising the Scottish government, has authored, with Jess Husbands, a report which ties the housing agenda into every aspect of wellbeing it can imagine.

With economic modelling by the Fraser of Allander Institute, and assuming the economy has enough spare capacity, it reckons 35,000 new social homes in Scotland over the next Holyrood parliament (2021-26) would deliver:

• A £6.4bn boost in construction and maintenance.

• £1.4bn improvements to health and educational attainment for the children who would move into them, providing benefits throughout their lives.

• £4bn in improved labour market supply of people no longer homeless and better able to go to work.

The report adds that 14,000 children in homeless families could anticipate warmer, safer, stabler home conditions, in place of the four in ten reckoned to be in poor quality accommodation and one in ten living with damp and condensation.

So to the economic benefit, the argument goes that housing delivers social, health, community and, if built to high energy efficiency standards, environmental benefits as well.

Many of these outcomes chime loudly with the needs highlighted through the coronavirus pandemic, ranging from more health resilience to more settled families where children get consistency of schooling.

Would a plentiful supply of secure housing solve all social ills? The report is at risk of pretending as much, and perhaps over-promising.

Its breadth of approach is striking, but it's not a new concept that housing is about a lot more than bricks, mortar and homelessness. Nicola Sturgeon's first job in government, 13 years ago, was as both health and housing minister.

Such was the link between poor quality housing and poor quality health that, back then, it was argued that one of the best ways of tackling chronic health conditions was to improve the quality of housing stock.

Following stock transfers from councils to housing associations, a lot has been demolished and new homes built.

Some 21 years since the Scottish Parliament took responsibility for housing policy, much has been achieved on that front - so much so that the primary challenge of poor quality housing is no longer social stock but private and rented.