Glasgow City Council announces plans for up to 12,000 more homes

Up to 12,000 new homes could be built in Glasgow after the city council announced plans to invest hundreds of millions of pounds into tackling the city's housing emergency.

Glasgow has been in a "housing emergency" since 2023, with heavy pressure on the city's homelessness services, with the rising cost of the problem affecting the city's overall budget.

Councillors have now passed plans to invest £674m into creating a confirmed 6,500 affordable houses, along with a pipeline for thousands more if further funding becomes available.

The initiative identified 59 sites across Glasgow as potential locations for a maximum 12,173 new homes, to be built between 2027 and 2032.

Disused shops could also be repurposed into housing, with the council wanting to increase the population of the city centre to about 40,000 people by 2035.

The measures come via the Strategic Housing Investment Programme (SHIP), which will combine funding for the new homes with measures to help Registered Social Landlords (RSLs) acquire another 430 homes for social rent.

A housing emergency is essentially when a council tells the government it is struggling and is seeking intervention - often meaning extra funding for the local authority to then use.

Councillor Ruairi Kelly, the depute leader and convener for housing, development and land use at Glasgow City Council, said the city had built more affordable homes than the likes of Manchester or Birmingham in recent years.

He added: "Working in partnership with local housing associations, housebuilders and the wider housing sector we want to be clear to government that Glasgow gets things built: and if they are able to increase our housing budget, we can build and acquire even more.

"This is the sort of investment that will not only provide these much-needed homes during a housing emergency but also boost the city's economy through supporting construction jobs and the wider supply chain."

In September it was revealed that the number of people living in temporary homeless housing in both Glasgow and Scotland as a whole had reached record highs.

Glasgow recorded its highest ever total of households in temporary homeless accommodation in March this year, and the figure of 4,890 included a record number of children - 3,350.

Social care workers told BBC Scotland News earlier this year that the city was currently inundated with demand for housing.

The new leader of Glasgow City Council, Ricky Bell, also spoke earlier this year about how the city was now "carrying the burden" of housing refugees for the "whole of Scotland".

His comments were made after figures showed that almost half of 3,895 homelessness applications in Glasgow between April and September 2025 came from people with refugee status or leave to remain.

Of the confirmed 6,500 homes, 74% will be for social rent, 24% for mid-market rent and 2% for New Supply Shared Equity or private sector rent.

They will be built on brownfield land - meaning previously developed land that is currently unused.

The overall SHIP scheme aims to bring more affordable homes to Glasgow, reducing homelessness and cutting down the number of children in poverty in the process.

It also intends to meet expected changes to the city's demographics - with the number of older people living there due to rise by an estimated 18% by 2036.