Glasgow City Council will allocate over £115million across the current financial year to build hundreds of new social and affordable homes.
This represents an increase of 20% on the previous year, and in total will support the construction of around 1,600 new properties already agreed, with a further 850 set to be approved this year.
In the previous financial year, the Affordable Housing Supply Programme (AHSP) funded the completion of close to 1,000 new homes, while work started on a further 750.
Councillor Ruairi Kelly, convener for housing, development and land use at Glasgow City Council, said the funding would make a significant contribution towards addressing the housing emergency in Glasgow, and speed up the regeneration of neighbourhoods across the city.
While the majority of funds from the AHSP support the building of new affordable homes, some is also used to acquire private sector properties for use by housing associations and transform non-residential buildings into homes.
Last year’s figures show that, in addition to the starts and completions, 90% of new approvals were for social rent homes, including 59 wheelchair-adaptable properties and over 100 three or four-bedroom family homes. An additional 175 properties were either acquired or brought back into use to support homeless households.
This year’s programme will see around £104million allocated for over 1,150 starts, 940 completions and 870 approvals, and close to £12million to acquire more vacant and void properties.
Councillor Ruairi Kelly said: “Demand for homes, costs of labour and materials and increased standards all put a squeeze on budgets, and while the city has not known pressures like these in generations, we are maximizing our efforts to deliver homes as quickly as possible. Innovative approaches to bringing vacant properties back into use and our social house building programme, which is by far the best in the UK, are just some of the ways we are tackling the housing emergency.”
“The Affordable Housing Supply Programme allows the council to support housing associations to build more social and affordable homes of all sizes and we are doing that across Glasgow – changing lives and transforming communities. Glasgow City Council and our RSL partners will also be in a position to accelerate this should more funding become available.”
