Edinburgh needs a housing emergency fund - Miles Briggs
On social policies and decision-making, people in Edinburgh are used to being overlooked.
Health funding, local authority investment and attention to crises including homelessness are frequently concentrated on the west of the country.
It results in our NHS and councils being stripped of cash which is redirected to places with supposedly greater need.
After over a decade of highlighting the negative impact on our public services by SNP Ministers. The assumption from the Scottish Government is people in the affluent east coast are just fine and don’t need to be fairly supported when it comes to public funds.
And yet anyone living or working in Edinburgh knows this to be a shambolic and damaging attitude and one that is escalating social problems across the city.
This was reinforced to me on a recent visit to the Rowan Alba Service in the north of the city, a brilliant resource helping vulnerable men, to see first-hand the problems Edinburgh is living through but also the solutions great organisations are coming up with. It is these sorts of models of supported living which is helping some of the most vulnerable people to keep a roof over their heads.
And it’s reinforced repeatedly in national statistics which show, despite its reputation among blinkered decision-makers, the capital has significant problems in relation to poverty, homelessness and a general lack of opportunity.
It all comes back to lack of affordable and social housing in a region where there is plenty of demand and significant room.
There are things the Scottish Government could do to help Edinburgh out, but won’t commit to.
Tens of thousands of new homes need to be built, and proper plans need to be produced to free up brownfield sites in order to do it.
Reforms to land and buildings transaction tax for those buying as a primary residence are also much needed, while the creation of a national planning hub would speed up every part of the housebuilding process, from planning applications and design to getting shovels in the ground.
Until that is done, the housing emergency we are experiencing in the Lothians shows no signs of abating. But it can be done.
Anyone driving around the south of the city where it borders with Midlothian can see the thousands of new homes which have been built in recent years by private developers. These new communities which have sprung up, with new council taxpayers, and good quality homes created.
It is clear that we need to see a new vision for the future with more mixed developments of smaller and larger homes for older Scots who want to downsize and more assisted living developments. SNP ministers are not going to be able to deliver these, but by working with private developers, they can create the environment to build our way out of this housing crisis.
As housing charities state, you cannot solve poverty unless you solve homelessness. They also say around half the new housing requirements are in the east of the country.
That’s why Edinburgh also needs a specific housing emergency fund.
It would help address a short-term crisis, but also go some way to righting a financial wrong which the Capital and the east of Scotland has endured for far too long.