Rough sleeping has more than doubled in three years, and record numbers of children are stuck in temporary accommodation as councils run out of places to put people. The core problem, it says, is not legislation but supply. Social and affordable housebuilding has lagged far behind need, creating a bottleneck that traps households in hotels and B&Bs and pushes others onto the streets.

The SNP’s delivery has fallen well short of its own homebuilding targets, with current plans providing barely half the annual number of social homes analysts say are required. The editorial suggests Scotland should look to Vienna, where decades of large‑scale public housing have stabilised rents and kept homelessness extremely low.

John Swinney’s proposal for a national housing agency is welcomed as an overdue acknowledgement of systemic failure, but the piece notes that his emphasis on efficiency falls short of the transformative, Vienna‑style expansion needed.

Without a major increase in public housebuilding, it warns, homelessness will continue to rise and the issue will dominate future elections. Scotland’s laws are humane; the question is whether the state can build enough homes to make them meaningful.

Read the article in full here.