Press Release: Globally renowned Scottish expert to shape policy to end the housing emergency

 12th August 2024

Professor Duncan Maclennan to lead a major project for the Edinburgh based think tank, the David Hume Institute

The David Hume Institute has announced a new programme of work with Professor Duncan Maclennan to look at the actions needed to transform the housing system in Scotland.

Housing is essential infrastructure for people and the economy. Currently too many people are unable to find a home or are living in poor quality housing that is affecting their health and their ability to be productive and thrive.

The work will look at the actions needed in the whole system from homelessness, unaffordable rents and planning, to skills shortages and supply-chain issues. 

Professor Maclennan has had a long and internationally distinguished career as an applied economist specialising in housing, neighbourhoods and cities. His professional roles have spanned senior positions in both academic and government settings, in the UK, Canada and Australia. At the University of Glasgow in the 1980s he established and led the Centre for Housing and Urban Research, and in the 1990s directed the ESRC Cities and Competitiveness Program and Joseph Rowntree Foundation programs on Housing Finance, Housing and the Macro-Economy and Housing and Area Regeneration. In recent years he has advised governments in Australia and Canada on housing system shifts to improve economic and environmental outcomes.

Professor Maclennan said

“I am delighted to be working with the David Hume Institute again to help understand the housing emergency. Difficult housing outcomes - homelessness, rising rent burdens and lengthening queues for social housing, falling home-ownership rates for the under 40’s - have spread and deepened for decades. They reflect a failure both of  income growth, especially for poorer Scots, and of the functioning of the housing system that has driven the sustained rise of housing prices ahead of incomes.

The roots of the emergencies in the overall housing system need to be understood and their consequences, not least for the economy and environment, recognised. Policy solutions may involve additional rights and fiscal resources, but the scale of emerging difficulties means that we urgently need to disrupt how we govern, plan and deliver new and improved homes that work for people, places, the economy and the environment. The work will aim to deliver proposals that can act to reduce difficulties now but will also frame a transformation of Scotland’s  housing system for the decades ahead”

Ken Ross, David Hume Institute Trustee and former Chair of both the Scottish Property Federation and Scottish House-Builders Association said

“I am proud that we have initiated this ambitious project to follow-up Duncan’s previous work for the David Hume Institute, A Scotland of Better Places. Business as usual is not an option. This project will help take Scotland’s housing system from a hideous emergency to one fit for the future to ensure this vital infrastructure is there to support people and the economy.”

ENDS

Notes to Editors

• The David Hume Institute is an independent think tank based in Scotland. The charity was established in 1985 to increase diversity of thought on the economy and related public policy. Find out more on our website

• About Professor Duncan Maclennan: Duncan was a member of the Board of Scottish Homes from 1989 until 1999 and then  spent a decade working in government, as special Adviser to the First Minister of Scotland, as a Chief Economist in the Government of Victoria and as Chief Economist in Canada’s Federal Department for Infrastructure and Cities. He has acted as adviser to Ministers in the UK, Scotland, France, Poland and Norway, Canada, Australia and New Zealand.  He is a fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh, the Academy of Social Sciences and Honorary Member of the Royal Town Planning Institute, The Chartered Institute of Housing and the Royal Institute of Chartered Surveyors. He was awarded a CBE for services to UK housing research in 1997. He remains affiliated to the University of Glasgow as an Emeritus Professor of Urban Economics and holds Professorial appointments in Housing Economics at McMaster University (Ontario) and UNSW (Sydney).