Mairi McAllan spoke at a housing meeting at the SNP Annual Conference in Aberdeen.
The recently appointed cabinet secretary, the first for housing, said providing a secure home was essential if the Scottish Government was to realise its ambition to eradicate child poverty.
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She said: “Having a safe, warm, affordable home to call your own is the foundation on which other measures on child poverty will be achieved.”
She said Scotland had made progress on housing, with more homes built, right to buy abolished and stringent homelessness prevention legislation.
However, she added: “I will be very clear, it is nowhere near enough. Homelessness is on the rise and housebuilding is going the wrong way.”
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Speaking at an event hosted by the Chartered Institute of Housing and Shelter, she said: “It’s not the fault of asylum seekers but there are real factors bearing down on the system.”
She cited the impact of Covid shutting down the construction sector in 2020 and the cost of building homes increasing since then and people’s needs becoming more acute had created a “perfect storm”.
She said she agreed there needs to be a “rapid step up in affordable homes” and that more money was needed to deliver.
The meeting heard various solutions to deliver more available homes, including ‘flipping’ temporary accommodation flats into permanent tenancies.
Buy back of homes sold under right to buy and purchasing homes in the private market were also proposed.
McAllan said: “A home that is secure is the foundation on which a child will avoid the pain and embarrassment of poverty and the provision of housing in the right place will unlock opportunities. This is mission critical.”
On the measures the Scottish Government had implemented and was implementing, she mentioned Awab’s Law, forcing landlords to deal with damp and mould within a set timescale after the child who died from living in a damp and mouldy home.
She said: “We can’t have a single child in a home that makes them unwell.”
Shelter Scotland said the country needed to change tack to deliver the homes needed and people did not have time to wait for homes to be built.”
GordonMcRae, Assistant Director, said: “Every 15 minutes a household becomes homeless in Scotland.”
He said 15,693 homes were needed every year before we start to see homelessness fall.
Richard Meade, of Scottish Federation of Housing Associations, said: “There are 300,000 people living in housing association properties and a quarter of a million waiting for one.
“That’s the crux of the housing emergency.”