Homes Build Futures

Scotland’s Housing Emergency

• Since 2008, Scotland has accumulated a shortfall of more than 110,000 homes
• 250,000 people are on housing waiting lists
• More than one in four Scottish households are identified as being in some form of housing need
• 18,092 households are in temporary accommodation, including 10,480 children

The Brief

Homes for Scotland (HFS) is the representative body for the home building sector. Together, its wide-ranging membership provides the vast majority of new homes of all tenures that are built across the country. HFS is committed to delivering more warm, sustainable, energy-efficient homes that meet the needs of the people of Scotland and that they can afford.

The brief to Muckle Media was simple: deliver the first consumer facing campaign of its type to ensure the need to build new homes at pace is viewed positively by the public and political influencers in what is a crucial pre-election period combined with the organisation’s 25th anniversary.

The Big Housing Challenges

We faced three big challenges:

• Engaging with a diverse audience, many of whom didn’t feel directly affected by the housing crisis
• Humanising a complex and politically focused issue
• Driving meaningful change and not just awareness

We needed to address these issues head on and spark the much-needed conversation in order to push the issue up the political agenda ahead of the May 2026 Holyrood election.

Objectives

• Build public awareness: Increase public understanding of the need for more homes of all-tenures, addressing stereotypes and misperceptions around home building
• Prioritise housing on the political agenda: Engage across all political parties to ensure housing policy was prioritised at the highest levels of decision-making
• Drive conversation: Amplify awareness through media coverage, in-person events, online conversations and debate on the topic of housing in the context of the housing emergency
• And the big one, MAKE HOUSING A NATIONAL PRIORITY

Some Home Truths

As the first campaign of this type and at a time where home building rates in Scotland are in ongoing decline, we had a compelling message to share. However, we had a wide and varied audience to target. We had to appreciate that not everyone has the same interaction with home building and would have differing, potentially conflicting, thoughts and feelings about it.

One of our biggest challenges was the sheer scale of our audience. It wasn’t a small section of society - it was everyone! Through our research we were able to distill our audience into two distinct groups: the haves and the have nots.

While these two groups are distinct, they are not separate. The impacts of the housing crisis are felt across different age groups, incomes and geography. It is affecting our cities, towns and rural communities. We needed a campaign that transcends these groups and opinions, appealing to the emotions of our audiences to that as well as the urgent requirement for more new homes now, there is a longer-term need to improve Scotland’s social, economic and environmental well-being.

So rather than tell these audiences the home truths as we saw them, we needed to show them the home truths of others and ask them to share theirs. Our research led us to focus on the next generation of voters. Unless there is a robust plan in place to address the imbalance between housing supply and demand, the stark reality is that there simply won’t be enough homes for our children or their children. We needed to focus on the future and so, the Homes Build Futures campaign was born.

The haves and the have nots

1. The ‘haves’

• Homeowners with equity
• Buy-to-let landlords
• Tenants in high-quality housing

2. The ‘have nots’

• Renters priced out of ownership
• People experiencing homelessness
• Overcrowded households
• First-time buyers struggling with affordability
• Key workers and low-income earners
• Marginalised groups
• Residents in declining housing stock

Planning (permission approved!)

The campaign had five key channels designed to create interest, spark conversation and debate and deliver change:

• A homes build futures website where we could host facts, allow people to share their stories and directly email their MSPs and councillors to encourage action
• An emotive social media video campaign to directly reach our audience in their homes
• An OOH campaign targeting both rural and urban locations
• A proactive and reactive press office to engage key opinion formers on the topic
• Targeted celebrity and influencer outreach to lend their voice to the campaign

What does home mean to you?

Central to the campaign was a simple but powerful question What does home mean to you?

This message was designed to resonate on a personal level, reminding people that a home is far more than just bricks and mortar. It’s where children do their homework, families come together and where security and stability should be.

By humanising the campaign from the outset, Homes Build Futures makes clear that access to a safe, secure home is fundamental to people’s social and mental wellbeing as well as being critical to Scotland’s economic growth and long-term success.

Capturing the hearts and minds of our nation with future voters

We kickstarted our campaign with a series of videos featuring young children sharing their hopes and dreams of their ideal home, what homes means to them and how they feel when considering other children just like them not having a home.

This resulted in highly emotive content that spearheaded our social media campaign. The visuals were also rolled out across seven billboards nationwide, amplifying the message beyond digital and urging the public to put pressure on their local MSPs.

Campaign voices

With the help of well-known public faces, we utilised their voices to bring the housing emergency and the action required to life. This included working alongside TV presenter and architect George Clarke who helped us launch the campaign to mark the year anniversary of the housing emergency.

Other notable names which lent their voices to the campaign were actor Alan Cumming, Social Bite founder and homeless advocate and campaigner Josh Littlejohn, TV presenter Gail Porter and Street Scotland Soccer founder David Duke.

Engaging with HFS members

It was also crucial for us to engage with Homes for Scotland members, who together deliver the vast majority of new homes of all tenures in Scotland. We developed a bespoke toolkit outlining everything members can do to engage with the campaign while live, from sharing content on their channels, engaging with social media posts or lending their voice to media opportunities. Also included were unique hoarding designs which could be used across building sites to capture public attention and also highlight the positive impact that building more homes has on the community.

Putting our house in the Cabinet Secretary’s hands

Our ‘always-on’ press office created a positive impact on a wide audience, generating meaningful interactions and traffic to the landing page through the various methods. We not only got in front of the public but policymakers and influential figures and journalists.

Through our work in lobbying the Scottish Government, we secured Cabinet Secretary for Housing Màiri McAllan to join children from the campaign film and young apprentices from the home building sector to launch the campaign outside of Scottish Government headquarters at St Andrew’s House, Edinburgh.

Key results

• 32 pieces of media coverage
• 517K social media views
• 3,600 pledges made
• +1,500 campaign letters sent
• 24 days of video content watched

Ultimate outcome

The Scottish Government announced in January 2026 that it would form a national housing agency to address the housing emergency. While we can’t claim credit for this, the Homes Build Futures campaign has certainly helped to raise awareness across the whole of civic society on the need for action.

Conclusion

Homes Build Futures proved that housing isn’t just a policy line, it is the foundation of Scottish society and provides safety and security to current and future generations.

By bridging the gap between ‘The Haves’ and ‘The Have Nots’ with our Homes Build Futures campaign, we didn’t just start a conversation; we demanded a resolution and government listened.

Homes Build Futures was more than a campaign, it has helped engender systemic change to help ensure that future generations of Scots have access to the range and choice of home that they deserve housing.