I know it's early in the morning, and I don't want to seem churlish or anything, but it seems at first glance that the SNP's new big idea on affordable housing is a bit like trying to shift 10 tonnes of gravel with a 5 ml medicine spoon. I know they say every little helps, but I would have hoped for something more ambitious.
What they're wanting to do is for Councils to team up with developers to build 1000 houses across Scotland, and then rent them out for 5 -10 years before selling them off.
I see 2 big potential problems with this.
Firstly, isn't it just moving on the problem 5-10 years? I mean, the people who rent the houses are still going to need to be housed in that time and then they'll find that they're sold under them. I come across families who too often end up on the homeless list whose private let is sold from underneath them and they can't find another.
Secondly, 1000? Well, the housing list in Fife alone, only 1 of Scotland's 32 Councils, is around 12,500 and they manage to find homes for around 2,500 every year. It's not even close to being enough, especially when the SNP Government is cutting desperately needed funds for social housing.
This National Housing Trust idea sounds like it has all the potential of the Scottish Futures Trust which so far has achieved very little. I am far from convinced that it will make any appreciable difference to the Scottish Social Housing crisis.
1 comment:
The one thing that you can be 100% sure of is that it is much better than the social housing provided by the Labour/LibDem coalition when they were in power at Holyrood.
Before you start criticizing what the SNP are doing you should remember that we have not forgotten your dismal record at Holyrood.
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