Projects

Communities supported by Rural Housing Scotland in 2019/20

We work across Scotland to help communities navigate the process of developing housing. Below are some of the communities we have supported recently or with which we have ongoing projects.

Smart Clachan

We are leading the development of an ambitious new initiative to tackle the interlinked issues of depopulation, demographic change and the climate crisis in Uist. In partnership with community landowner Stòras Uibhist and with funding from Emsée Fairbairn Foundation, Rural Housing Scotland plan to develop Smart Clachan which will incorporate cooperative community-led housing, workspaces, growing space and the use of renewable energy.

Radical Rural Housing

Rural Housing Scotland is delighted to have been awarded funding from The Pebble Trust for a new project which will examine whether cooperative housing models such as Mutual Home Ownership Cooperatives (MHOC) can help solve the issue of lack of affordable housing for young people in the Highlands & Islands, as well as reducing individual household dependency on fossil fuels and finite resources by incorporating co-housing concepts such as communal heating systems, shared transport, growing space, shared renewables, and shared workspace.

Wider work

Alongside our work with communities, we met with Cabinet Secretaries in charge of housing and rural policy and provided input to policy development on empty homes, rural homelessness, planning, short term lets, depopulation, rural economic development, land reform, island and rural proofing.