Scotland’s housing emergency is getting worse and the system is “broken”, a senior local authority official has warned.

John Mills, head of housing at Fife Council, said demand had soared since the Covid pandemic due to the number of relationship breakdowns.

And he told BBC Scotland’s The Sunday Show the government needs to build at scale, buy more homes and reduce the number of empty properties in the public and private sector.

The Scottish government declared a national housing emergency in May last year and recently pledged to invest up to £4.9bn in affordable homes over the next four years.

Mr Mills said there were “some green shoots of recovery” in Fife but added the outlook was less positive in Glasgow and Edinburgh.

He told the programme: “We have just got to recognise that this is a long road.

“There is no quick fixes to resolving the housing emergency.”

Mr Mills said in Scotland there were signs of homelessness increasing before the pandemic and the first national lockdown in March 2020.

But since then he said the sector had faced a “number of headwinds” including the cost of living crisis and “significant” construction inflation.

Mr Mills added: “We thought after the Covid pandemic we would be in a period of recovery and things would get better.

“They have actually got worse.

“The demand for temporary accommodation has certainly rocketed after the pandemic and homelessness has continued to increase.”

He said the number of people seeking housing from the private rented sector was also a significant issue.

But Mr Mills, who is also the co-chair of the Association of Local Authority Chief Housing Officers, added: “The main causes of homelessness in Scotland are still relationship breakdowns.

“So people can’t live with relatives, friends, family or they can’t live with their partner any more and they are coming to local authorities in increasing numbers.

“Take all that together you get to a point when the housing system is now broken in Scotland. That’s what the regulator is saying.”

Mr Mills said the national action plan, announced last month by Housing Minister Màiri McAllan, was a “very positive start”.

But he told The Sunday Show a report will this week call for 15,000 affordable houses a year over the next parliament, which is estimated to cost £8.2bn.

Mr Mills, who is on the Housing 2040 board which works with the Scottish government and Cosla, also called for a change to the housing finance system as a lot of the borrowing for new properties comes for tenant’s rents.

He said: “That’s unsustainable because rent levels are increasing.”

Last week BBC Scotland News highlighted the case of a woman in Glasgow’s Govanhill, one of the most deprived areas in Scotland.

Elle Glenny, 31, told how the rent on her one-bedroom flat in the south of the city had jumped from £590 to £700 a month.

The community worker said: “I’m now paying up to 50% of my income every single month just to live.”

Her landlord said the rent increase reflected the market rate for the area.

There is no standard definition of a housing emergency and the Scottish government’s declaration last year placed no new legal duties on it to act.

However, it was an admission from ministers that the current situation needed to be urgently addressed.

One of the main reasons is that demand for housing of all kinds, but especially social housing, is vastly outstripping supply.

In addition, rents are rising in the private sector and the cost of living crisis means that people who previously may not have struggled are finding it harder to afford higher rents or get on the property ladder.

In 2021 the Scottish government set a target to build 110,000 affordable homes by 2032, delivering 10,000 homes each year.

Affordable housing includes social housing, mid-market rent and affordable home ownership. Campaigners say social housing is needed the most desperately.

A new report has been produced by experts at Sheffield, Liverpool and Sheffield Hallam universities, who were commissioned by Shelter Scotland, the Scottish Federation of Housing Associations and Chartered Institute for Housing.

Their research, shared with BBC Scotland News, suggests that at least 15,690 new affordable homes now need to be built in Scotland each year – an increase of almost 50% since 2020.

They estimate this would cost £1.64bn annually, a total of £8.2bn over the next five-year session of the Scottish Parliament.

Shelter Scotland says this is “a very significant increase” and that it has seen “no evidence thus far of an emergency response” from the government.

Director Alison Wilson said: “We face a simple choice – invest in the homes we need now, or pay the price for generations.”

The Scottish Federation of Housing Associations said the research made clear that ending the housing emergency would require “building a lot more social homes and a radical and sustained increase in the housing budget”.

Most campaigners and experts agree that the creation of more social housing offers the best route to get people out of homelessness.

The number of live homeless cases reached a record high in 2024, when it stood at more than 31,000 households.

They are also now over 16,000 households in Scotland living in temporary accommodation, including over 10,000 children. Both these figures are also record highs.

Scotland’s latest homelessness figures are due to be published on Tuesday.

Meanwhile, private rents in Scotland have been steadily rising over the last decade.

The average price for a rented property in Scotland is now £999 per month – compared to £673 in July 2015.