New homes alone are not enough – we need to build communities

During this week’s Scottish Parliament debate about the current crisis, MSPs squabbled over which party’s housing, planning and infrastructure policies were best … but not one of them mentioned shops.

There’s not much point raising wages if rents keep rising too

The government cannot sit on its hands and blame market forces for the plight of those citizens who will never get on the property ladder (and quite possibly don’t want to either). It doesn’t take an economics degree to see this is a problem of supply and demand to which building is the solution.

Payslips and Facebook posts alone won’t tell you who’s in poverty

A WARM winter coat. A damp-free home. Fresh fruit and veg. A week’s holiday every year. Are these the bare necessities of life in the UK? What about broadband, curtains, or household insurance? It’s hard to pin down exactly what we mean when we talk about living in poverty. One man or woman’s luxury –

Is inheritance really a toxic topic in Scottish politics?

If the transfer of assets from parents to their children is thwarting aspirations of social mobility, why won’t our politicians come out and say so?

Don’t the banks have a role to play in enforcing landlord registration rules?

HAVE you ever committed a crime by accident? Perhaps you’ve absent-mindedly left a shop without paying, or crept above the speed limit, or breached a celebrity superinjunction. If you’re an “accidental landlord” you might be indulging in criminal activity at this very moment, by letting out a property without registering. If so, should you be

The Bank of Mum and Dad is not the solution to Generation Rent’s problem – lower house prices are

It makes little sense for most owner-occupiers to celebrate house price rises … especially if their own children are being locked out of the property market.

How to solve the housing crisis? Focus on quality, not just quantity

HOUSING provision is more than just a numbers game, but numbers are a great place to start so Nicola Sturgeon’s pledge to build 50,000 homes over the life of the next parliament is very welcome news. This target falls some way short of that sought by Shelter Scotland, of 23,000 new homes a year, but