Fresh thinking needed to tackle housing crisis

Decades of policy incompetence have left us in a mess, says Mev Brown

EDINBURGH'S leader for housing Paul Edie has called for more money from Holyrood to address the city's homeless problem.

It has taken decades of political incompetence to achieve today's housing crisis. An obvious example is Margaret Thatcher's Right to Buy policy.

In her gusto to create a property-owning society, millions of council homes were sold. The flaw was that the price paid didn't cover the cost of construction, leaving councils with huge debt.

When Labour took power in 1997, many people thought that the right to buy would be scrapped and councils would, once again, start building.

However, even now, Labour prohibits councils from building.

Housebuilding is bearing the brunt of the credit crunch.

Around two-thirds of newly unemployed workers are from the construction sector. So with the proper public sector investment in housebuilding, the construction industry could lead the way out of the credit crunch.

However, scrapping the right to buy is, ironically, blocked by housing allocation policy.

Only a minority of tenants actually pay rent, around 35 per cent in Edinburgh. The remainder have the rent paid via housing benefits, money from the Treasury.

However, when you look at the priorities in housing allocation policy it is, for all practical purposes, focused towards benefit claimants.

The Treasury knows that if the right to buy was scrapped there would be a public expectation for councils to start building again – with it picking up the tab.

Furthermore, it is the sheer scale of the problem. There are around 26,425 people on Edinburgh council's housing waiting list. Given an average cost of construction of £80,000 per unit, the bill would be £2.1 billion. The Scottish Government doesn't have that kind of spare cash.

I fear Labour will retain the right to buy to prevent councils building – at least in any meaningful measure.

There is a desperate need for new thinking in housing policy.

But which politicians are capable of new thinking?

• Mev Brown works with the homeless in Edinburgh