Out canvassing in Balerno last week, I knocked on the door of a nice terraced house, but the man who came to the door didn’t match the name in the register.
He quite openly said he was a recent immigrant who couldn’t find a home in England, but he discovered the rules in Scotland meant councils were obliged to house people who present themselves as homeless, so he headed for Edinburgh.
Council house provision is woefully lacking in the Capital and unlikely to improve under present rules
And sure enough the council quickly found him a good place to live, in one of the nicest parts of the city. I’m sure he’s delighted, and fair play to him for understanding the system.
The rules mean thousands of Edinburgh people looking for a new home have been told they are not a priority and will have to wait until March next year before the suspension of the council’s standard council house allocations policy is lifted.
So young couples who start a family can be stuck in homes too small for their needs and unsuitable as children grow into teenagers.
But such is the snail-like pace of house building there is no chance of a meaningful increase in supply to end the housing emergency and the council avoiding the risk of illegally putting homeless people in unlicenced houses in multiple occupation.
So if the SNP-imposed system forcing councils to prioritise homeless people without local connection remains, the suspension will stay and Edinburgh families will be kept waiting with little prospect of finding a suitable place to live.
The SNP has had years to address the crisis, but has done little except make life more difficult for the existing population, but we have a chance to change things this May and vote them out of power.
Of course readers would expect me to urge voters to get the tired Nationalists out, and replace them with a government which wants to get things done instead of bleating on about an independence referendum, and for the choice to be the Scottish Conservatives.
Readers can make up their own minds, but we do have a plan to crack the housing crisis and it starts with ending the SNP’s legal requirement to put homeless migrants ahead of locals when it comes to housing allocations.
But it goes much further than that. We would abolish Land and Buildings Transaction Tax (LBTT) on primary residences, which puts 10 per cent on the price of an average Edinburgh home, to encourage people to right size and get the market flowing
We’d build 80,000 affordable homes in the next five years, which can be achieved by removing costly demands on builders which slow development. We’d scrap damaging rent controls which deters private investment, without which nothing gets built.
We’ll also set up a Brownfield Development Fund to bring vacant and derelict sites back into use, again taking the onus away from the builders which just adds to the cost of a new home.
It is essential that as many barriers as possible are removed so Scotland becomes the number one place to invest and build, and because demand is high that the number one place in Scotland is Edinburgh.
And if we get houses built then when migrants come knocking on the council’s door, there will be safe places for them which does not disadvantage local people.
