City housing crisis is top of my priorities - Isabella Gastel Alejandre
There’s been a lot of talk in the ward recently about the plans for the Scottish Widows building. Obviously using brownfield land and/or repurposing buildings for housing is a great idea but not all plans are created equal.
There is concern that the type of residences to be created there will be high-cost and even potentially cause a knock-on effect of increasing rents in the area as a whole.
Even the ‘affordable’ part of new housing developments can leave some people out, as those capped at ‘mid-market rents’ are often not affordable for those on the lowest incomes.
One of my priorities is tackling Edinburgh’s housing crisis. If elected, I will work to ensure that new residences in Southside/Newington and across the city are genuinely affordable for everybody.
The housing crisis isn’t only about a lack of housing but the cost of housing, and I want an Edinburgh where everybody can choose to live near their work, friends, and family; one where nobody has been priced out of their own city.
My colleague Lorenzo Martinico; Scottish Green candidate for Portobello/Craigmillar, has spent the last few years working in and advocating for co-operatives, so he has first-hand experience in how transformative worker and tenant ownership can be.
Unfortunately, the Labour administration in the council has been unwilling to work with co-operatives, and the SNP in Holyrood have all but eliminated any co-operative development support.
That’s why he wants to work in the council to support community ownership. Edinburgh is already a pioneer, with Portobello being a shining example of how successful this can be, but most of Portobello’s projects are entirely community-led.
We could go much further if the council adopted a model, like Preston council already has, of changing procurement rules to favour companies that provide community benefits or are democratically run by their workers; moving savings and pensions to local credit unions; insourcing more services and investing in the development of local co-operatives.
Greens are often accused of being ‘anti-growth’, but co-operative ownership and Community Wealth Building is the kind of good growth we can all get behind, and exactly the kind of growth I will encourage if elected on September 3.