2026 Election Candidate Answers Part 2: Housing and Built Heritage

Questions acknowledged, but no answers provided to date.

From Paul Steele, Glasgow Region list candidate.

On the specific issue of housing The Independence for Scotland party states in its manifesto that every Scot should have a home. As it says:
There is a chronic shortage of housing in Scotland and ISP considers that is a fundamental duty of Government to ensure that all Scots have access to good quality housing. Homelessness is unacceptable in a wealthy nation.

No acknowledgement of questions, and no response provided.

From Audrey Dempsey, Glasgow Easterhouse and Springburn constituency and Glasgow Region list candidate.

People are being squeezed from all sides. rents rising, mortgages rising, bills rising. At the same time, we’re seeing neglect of buildings that are part of our identity as a city.
We need balance: protect people first, and protect heritage sensibly.
– Increase housing supply properly not just targets on paper. That means unlocking land, speeding up planning, and actually building homes people can afford.
– Prioritise local people. those who live and work here should not be pushed out of their own communities.
– Fairer deal for renters and landlords. we need stability, not policies that drive landlords out of the market and reduce supply further.
– Support for property maintenance and restoration. offer practical incentives (not red tape) to help owners maintain historic buildings.
– Stronger action on derelict and unsafe properties. too many are left to rot while demand for housing grows.
Dennistoun’s character matters but so do the people living in it. Policy needs to reflect both.

No acknowledgement of questions, and no response provided.

No acknowledgement of questions, and no response provided.

From Josephine MacLeod, Glasgow Easterhouse and Springburn constituency and Glasgow Region list candidate.

Affordability is a major challenge. I support increasing housing supply across all tenures, alongside practical support for first-time buyers and renters. At the same time, maintaining & protecting our built heritage is essential to keeping the character and identity of areas like Dennistoun. This requires stronger enforcement, investment in maintenance, and working with local authorities and communities to preserve historic buildings while ensuring they remain safe and usable. Developing a maintenance culture will keep historical buildings pristine. Also very important is for newly built housing to have from the design onset to development, cost-effective energy saving & amenities such as play parks, youth centres, and local shops incorporated in the plans.

From Andrew John Brady, Glasgow Region list candidate.

The Scottish Family Party is dedicated to making Scotland, including communities like Dennistoun, a place where families can afford to live, work, and flourish across generations. Our policies focus on reducing the financial burden on households and managing the housing market to prioritize long-term residents over speculative interests.
Making Living and Working Affordable: To help residents manage the cost of living and stay within their communities, we propose significant reforms to the tax and benefits systems:
Council Tax Discounts for Families: We believe the current property-based Council Tax penalizes families. We would introduce a 25% discount per dependent child. For a family with four children, this would mean paying no Council Tax at all, significantly easing the pressure on both owners and renters.
Transferable Tax Allowances: We advocate for assessing married couples as a family unit rather than individuals. Tax allowances would be fully transferable while children are in the home, effectively reducing the tax burden for families with one primary earner or those sharing care duties.
Controlling the Housing Market: To prevent residents from being priced out, we support the Additional Dwelling Supplement and would consider increasing it. This aims to balance the market by discouraging buy-to-let landlords and short-term holiday lets (such as Airbnb) from dominating areas where young families are looking to buy or rent.
Reducing Costs for Families: We propose making all public transport and council-run attractions (like museums and pools) free for accompanied children, helping to lower the everyday expenses of living in an urban center.
Protecting Built Heritage and Urban Environments: While our manifesto does not mention Dennistoun by name, it outlines a clear vision for the preservation and revival of Scotland’s urban centers:
Cherishing Scottish Culture: We believe the riches of traditional Scottish culture should be cherished and supported. This includes the physical environment that gives our communities their distinct personality.
Urban Regeneration: We advocate for attractive, well-maintained streets and high-quality housing. We believe that maintaining the character of a neighborhood, combined with good accessibility, is vital to reviving and sustaining town and city centers.
Planning for Families: We support granting planning permission for home extensions where possible. This allows families to stay in their historic homes as they grow, rather than being forced to move away due to lack of space.
Brownfield Development: We favor facilitating new housing on brownfield sites through the planning system to meet demand without encroaching unnecessarily on green spaces or damaging the existing community fabric.
The Scottish Family Party believes that a stable population is the key to a healthy nation.

From Iris Duane, Glasgow Region list candidate.

The ever-rising cost of living is felt deeply in communities like Dennistoun and across other parts of Glasgow, where rents increasing way beyond inflation is forcing people to move out of their community. Green MSPs will be supporting our Councillor group to get rent controls in place across Glasgow, ensuring they get the Housing Act guidance on Rent Control Zones enacted as soon as possible.
We also want to give Councils the power to freeze or decrease the rent in areas where costs have spiralled out of control, including Mid Market Rent and Purpose Built Student Accommodation in this too.
There has also been an increase in Short Term Lets in the area. We want there to be a system in place that allows more people to buy housing for a home, rather than a business model. To counter this, we would want to see higher rates of Additional Dwelling Supplements on Land and Building Transactions Tax within rent control areas that have been experiencing those pressures of short-term lets.
Keeping housing, and tenement properties in particular, in a good condition is vital as part of Glasgow’s heritage. This is another area we wish to see improved. Green MSPs would want changes to tenement housing and factoring legislation, including creating a loan fund to assist in owners’ associations carrying out repairs to buildings, and removing licenses to exist for poor factoring companies.

From Vonnie Sandlan, Glasgow Central constituency and Glasgow Region list candidate.

Dennistoun is a fantastic place to live, but I know from talking to local residents on the doors that many people are finding it harder to afford to stay here.
Rising rents, increasing costs, and the wider cost of living crisis are putting real pressure on both renters and homeowners. Addressing that has to start with increasing the supply of genuinely affordable homes – without that, the pressure on prices will remain.
My colleague Paul Sweeney, Labour’s candidate for Easterhouse and Springburn, has been a fantastic advocate for Glasgow’s built heritage and housing, and I hope to learn from his depth of knowledge and commitment in this area.
The scale of the challenge is really significant. The maintenance backlog for Glasgow’s pre-WW1 tenements is estimated at around £3 billion which is a staggering figure, and one that highlights how long this issue has been developing. I have been really impressed with the scale of ambition shown by Reidvale Housing Association, particularly with the refurbishments taking place on Bellfield Street, and it is critical if we are to truly tackle the housing crisis that we secure capital investment into Glasgow to make sure that homes are fit to live in now and ready for the future too.
I’m very supportive of proposals for a Tenements and Factors Bill, which could help enable the creation of owners’ associations so that essential repairs can go ahead without being blocked by a single property. That kind of reform is long overdue and I believe would make a real difference in practice.
In terms of supporting both renters and homeowners, the cost of living crisis is affecting everyone and it’s essential that the Scottish Government does more to ease that pressure, whether that’s through stronger protections for tenants, increasing the supply of affordable housing, or supporting homeowners with the cost of repairs and energy efficiency improvements.
Scottish Labour has committed to increasing housing supply and tackling the drivers of high housing costs. Alongside that, I would support:
– Stronger protections for renters;
– Increased delivery of affordable housing;
– Support for homeowners facing the cost of repairs and improving energy efficiency.
On built heritage, the recent fires and damage in the city centre are a serious concern. There are parts of our city which now feel totally unloved – as well as the recent fire beside Central Station, we still have the Glasgow School of Art and former ABC buildings sitting unresolved after those fires – the second of which was eight years ago now. Too often, buildings are allowed to deteriorate until they become unsafe, at which point the options are limited and the city is scarred and blighted with the ruins.
In Dennistoun, the tenements and historic buildings are a core part of its identity, and protecting them requires earlier and more coordinated action. That means:
– Stronger enforcement where properties are being neglected;
– Better support for tenement maintenance and repairs;
– Closer working between government, local authorities and housing associations to prevent buildings reaching crisis point.
This is about more than preserving buildings, it’s about preserving homes and protecting the character of the area and ensuring people can continue to live and work here.

From Paul Sweeney, Glasgow Easterhouse and Springburn constituency and Glasgow Region list candidate.

I’ve responded in the form of a video blog which you can find on YouTube here: https://youtu.be/zhhTGO2j-4E.

From the Glasgow Liberal Democrats, with Glasgow Easterhouse and Springburn constituency, Glasgow Central constituency, and Glasgow Region list candidates.

We have proposed a number of policies to help people with the cost of living, including helping working families with the costs of childcare, building more affordable homes and supporting people to gain new skills to take on a new career.
We also know that elevated housing costs are a major problem and prevent people from living near their work or in the communities where they grew up. We would focus on establishing social rent as a long-term option, prioritising the building of communities, and deploying innovative finance models that make it easier for people to buy and rent. Our manifesto includes plans to launch a programme of 10,000 new homes for key workers, with eligibility to be decided locally.
We would end the era of cuts to the Scottish Fire and Rescue Service, aiming to reduce response times both for the first responding appliance and specialist equipment.

From Ivan McKee, Glasgow Easterhouse and Springburn constituency and Glasgow Region list candidate.

I am committed to ensuring that people can afford to continue living and working in Dennistoun, while safeguarding the historic character of our neighbourhood.
If re-elected the SNP will support first-time buyers struggling to get on the housing ladder by part-funding their mortgage deposit with a joint equity contribution of up to £10,000.
We will introduce new legislation to give private rental tenants a period of first refusal to purchase the property they rent at a fair market price when the owner chooses to put it up for sale, protecting tenants from displacement and bringing more stability to communities.
For renters, I support a fairer private rented sector that offers stability and protection from sharp rent rises. In areas like Dennistoun, where demand is high, I support the Scottish Government’s new system of evidence based rent controls, allowing councils to assess local rent pressures and recommend Rent Control Areas where justified.
Since 2007, the SNP has delivered over 141,000 affordable homes across Scotland, including 101,000 for social rent – proportionately far more than elsewhere in the UK. But in the face of a housing emergency, we must do more. In the 2026–27 Scottish Budget, I backed the largest funding allocation to affordable housing since records began in 1989, with up to £4.9 billion committed over the next four years. This funding boost will support the delivery of 110,000 affordable
homes by 2032. I will continue to press for this investment to be directed to communities like Dennistoun, where housing pressure is greatest.
The SNP are committed to reforming existing legislation regarding tenements and property factors to make it easier to organise and finance repairs, strengthening the regulation and accountability of property factors, and improving transparency around costs, to help protect households and safeguarding our distinctive tenements for the future.

From Liam McLaughlan, Glasgow Region list candidate.

Our manifesto/action plan is centred around the cost-of-living as the number one concern of working-class people, including those in areas like Dennistoun.
What makes Dennistoun and areas like it special is the mix of traditional tenement housing with new build properties and small businesses lining much of the area.
As well as the aforementioned Bill to scrap the council tax, leading to 8 out of 10 people paying less, SSP MSPs will in addition bring forward a Bill to build 100,000 eco-friendly
council/publicly owned housing, for affordable rent – built to the highest environmental standard.
We support a strong package of rent controls, and for renters in particular, a new drive on house building would open up the housing stock and end the current situation of far too
many people (particularly young people), being trapped in a cycle of the overly inflated and often poorly serviced private housing market being the only option of a place to call home.
Another key pledge of our manifesto is that the Scottish Government should declare an immediate, non-statutory Living Minimum Wage of £15-an-hour for Scotland’s 600,000 public
sector workers and the 130,000-plus employed in private companies with public sector contracts – as a step towards a legally enforced £15 minimum wage for all workers over 16.
On fire protection, since 2013 the SNP/SNP Green coalition have overseen the loss of 1,239 firefighters’ jobs since the merger to a single force with cuts of £900million from the inception of the SFRS to 2027/28. That literally is the difference between life and death. Between destruction and restoration. We have committed to campaigning alongside the FBU, to
protect and improve a vital frontline service, and the health and conditions of all firefighters.

No acknowledgement of questions, and no response provided.

From Catherine McKernan, Glasgow Region list candidate.

The cost-of-living crisis is acute in Dennistoun. Long-term residents are being pushed out by rising rents, short-term lets are hollowing out our tenements, and owners of ageing Victorian stock are struggling to afford the repairs needed to protect both their homes and our shared built heritage. The recent fire damage in Glasgow city centre was a stark reminder of what happens when historic buildings are neglected or left in speculative ownership with no stake in the community.
The Workers Party Scotland commits to a massive programme of social housebuilding and the transformation of tenancy law to put power back in the hands of renters. In the Scottish Parliament, I will fight to ensure this vision is delivered locally.
On affordability and renters, I will:
– Push for stronger rent controls that close the loopholes landlords currently exploit, with proper enforcement and genuine penalties for non-compliance.
– Champion an expansion of social and affordable housing in the East End, including sensitive infill development that respects the character of Dennistoun’s tenement streetscape.
– Protect our existing social housing stock from any further stock transfer or privatisation schemes.
– Tackle the proliferation of short-term lets that remove homes from the private rented sector and drive up rents for working families.
On built heritage, I will:
– Campaign for Historic Environment Scotland to receive greater powers and resources to intervene where neglect threatens listed or locally significant buildings, before we lose them.
– Advocate for a Glasgow Heritage Emergency Fund, modelled on existing programmes, to assist owners of Category B and C-listed properties with essential repairs.
– Fight for stronger compulsory purchase powers for local authorities to acquire and restore fire-damaged or long-term derelict buildings before they are mysteriously “torched” and permanently “lost”.
This is not nostalgia. Our built heritage is a community asset, a source of affordable housing, and a driver of local pride and economic activity. Letting it crumble is a false economy that the Workers Party will never accept.

From Elspeth Lynn Kerr, Glasgow Region list candidate.

Thanks for asking about this. Many renters and owners are finding it harder to stay in the area because of rising costs. I would work with other MSPs to cap rental prices. I would also work to have more control and oversight over Landlords statutory responsibilities. I believe a good, safe, warm home is a human right.
I would always do whatever possible to support people to live close to where they work, so communities stay stable and connected. I have wanted changes to the council tax system for a very long time as I realise how unfair and incongruous council tax is. I would work with others to find a different way that was more equitable.
Dennistoun’s built heritage is beautiful and people care deeply about it. The area’s tenements, historic buildings and conservation areas are a huge part of what makes it special. Heritage groups have called for stronger enforcement of planning rules, better resourcing for councils, and clearer national oversight so that important buildings are properly protected. I would support these.
I know how important it is for people to be able to afford to stay in the community they love, while also keeping the character and history that make Dennistoun unique.

From Craig Houston, Glasgow Region list candidate.

We already know we have a National Housing Crisis. A shortage always leads to inflated prices. We need to stop paying lip service to our lack of affordable and social housing and start building more houses. My understanding is Dennistoun is a Conservation Area and I would be interested to hear if this isn’t enough to preserve the area’s fine heritage.