Affordable homes shortage is adding to Scotland’s social unrest - Sue Webber
Apart from the ongoing madness of cancel culture institution-alised by former First Minister Nicola Sturgeon and her promotion of gender politics, the weekend’s Scottish news bulletins were dominated by demonstrations outside a Falkirk hotel being used to house asylum seekers.
The Cladhan Hotel is managed by Mears Group on behalf of the Home Office and feelings in Falkirk have been running high since an Afghan asylum seeker was jailed for nine years in June for the 2023 rape of a 15-year-old girl in the town centre.
As was rightly pointed out, it’s wrong to label all Asian men seeking refuge as rapists, but many of those demonstrating against the arrival of refugees were motivated by a sense that the needs of the existing population are less of a priority.
Who can blame them? Lengthening NHS waiting lists, no NHS dentistry, popular schools over-subscribed and an acute shortage of affordable homes. How can we keep taking more immigrants when we can’t house the people who are here, they ask?
It’s a reasonable question with no satisfactory answer and the argument that the economy needs more immigrants because of a skills shortage wears thin when over a fifth of the working age population are not in employment.
The situation has become so dire in Edinburgh that only the most pressing requests for council and registered social landlord housing have been met since last November, because without nearly enough suitable accommodation for homeless families the council was breaking the law.
Now the suspension of normal letting policy has been extended until March 2027 to give the council more time to sort it out, using portable buildings if necessary, which is likely to cause neighbourhood problems if not carefully sited.
Council data shows that of 3800 households presenting as homeless in 2024-25, just over three-quarters with a connection with Edinburgh ─ and over 800 were single people forced out because of violence ─ so the problem is largely home grown, especially as some connection claims are tenuous.
But 466, an eighth, were from asylum seekers or people granted refugee status, so the number is not insubstantial.
The point is not that they shouldn’t be housed, but as long as the council is unable to restore normal allocation policies then it creates fertile conditions for the rise of extremism.
Even with the continued suspension of the letting policy, the council still anticipates just over 500 households will remain in unsuitable temporary accommodation, while it deals with applications from around 900 households with no connection to the city it would normally expect to arrive.
The problem has been building for far longer than the declaration of a housing emergency, going back to inadequacies in planning at both council and national level. and the SNP has been responsible for a lot of talk about bold ambition but without anything like the necessary action to avert the current crisis.
In my time as a councillor, meeting after meeting heard senior SNP councillors ─ whose expertise would have improved by watching a series of Bob the Builder ─ bragging about their house-building programme when it was glaringly obvious from the start they wouldn’t achieve even half their target. And their Labour pals, now trying desperately to cling to power, just nodded along in agreement.
A better plan than the current sticking plaster approach is urgently needed.