ARIANE BURGESS: Housing needs to be about providing homes, not making money
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Holyrood Notebook by Ariane Burgess
The need for affordable, accessible and adequate homes continues to be a crucial topic in the Highlands. Many people struggle to find a home where they want to live, and, if they do, they face unaffordable rents and inadequate accommodation.
Things have been made worse, with the cost of energy crisis hitting most of us. And in the northern and coastal Highlands it will bring energy bills that are higher than other parts of the country due to the climate.
The Scottish Government has a commitment to support local authorities to build more houses and for 70 per cent of them to have affordable rents. There is also work being done to ensure that what is built is easier to heat. But there are challenges, including the lack of skilled people to take up the work and the rising cost of materials, and that is currently amplified in our island communities.
Then there’s the issue of finding appropriate land for building on. Now that we’ve begun to understand the climate and nature emergencies, we need to reconsider where we build housing.
Does it make sense to build on good agricultural land when we should be growing food closer to home? Is building on peatland when we’re racing to restore peat in other areas counter-productive?
While building more homes is essential, it must be part of a range of changes. These changes have to include the regulation of short-term lets and second homes, and steps to bring empty properties back into use.
It was good to hear that Highland Council is having success with its offer to buy houses from people wanting to sell and turning them into affordable rental homes.
Councils are developing their short-term lets licensing schemes, and Highland Council has taken the decision to implement a short-term let pressure zone in Badenoch and Strathspey. It will take time for us to see the benefit of these actions filtering through, but they will set an important precedent.
Housing features in most discussions I have with rural and island communities. They tell me they are losing community members, young people and families to Scotland’s cities and beyond. This steady outflow could mean the loss of these communities. Meanwhile, there’s pressure in our cities to find places to build housing for those wanting to move there for greater access to jobs and opportunities.
Recently I met with community and private landowners in Tongue to discuss affordable housing. What gave me hope at this meeting is that everyone involved owned land and they were prepared to embark on the huge but important task of making affordable housing locally.
With tough choices to be made on where we direct housing resource, what the Highlands needs is a thousand well placed affordable homes across the area, creating that opening for young people and families to stay or settle in our villages, rather than a thousand more houses adding to Inverness sprawl.
To that end I'm working to ensure that there is support from the Scottish Government for rural housing enablers like Community Housing Trust who help communities build housing they desperately need.
These solutions take time.
With the First Minister’s announcement of this year’s Programme for Government came the commitment to an immediate rent freeze and a significant ramping up of protection from evictions. This will be taken forward by Green Minister Patrick Harvie. In the short-term this emergency bill will make a big difference this winter for people who rent their homes.
Ultimately, we need long-term solutions, and part of that is a culture change away from housing being seen as a money-making investment to one that is about providing homes for people.
- Ariane Burgess is a Green MSP for the Highlands and Islands.
