SCOTS have been left outraged at the announcement that advertisements for council housing in Edinburgh have been temporarily suspended.
The update from EdIndex, a partnership between the City of Edinburgh Council and 17 local housing associations, was shared to social media yesterday.
It cited “unprecedented pressures” on council housing and homelessness services as the reason for the decision.
It has sparked discussions online among Scots sharing their opinions and theories as to what has led to such measures being taken.
Available council properties in the city are listed through a scheme known as Key to Choice, where people can bid on which ones meet their needs.
However, the council has advised that those seeking a house will still be able to use the scheme to bid for homes available through housing associations or co-operatives.
Two of these associations use a traditional points system to determine priority and will contact people directly if a property becomes available.
The announcement reads: “We are sorry to advise that due to unprecedented pressures across the Housing and Homelessness service we have made the difficult decision to temporarily pause the advertising of Council housing on our Key to Choice website.
“This will be kept under review.
“If you hold Urgent Gold or Gold Priority for ground floor accessible homes you will be contacted directly by your Assessment Officer if a suitable Council home that meets your needs becomes available.
“Housing Association and Housing Co-op homes will still be advertised on Key to Choice on a weekly basis.
“We are unable to respond to individual enquiries, but regular updates will be available here.”
It was shared to social media yesterday with the caption: “You cannot apply for a council house in Edinburgh.”
The post has since received a slew of likes and comments from Scots voicing their opinions.
One wrote: “I think part of it is councils knocking down multis and blocks of flats and replacing them with terraced houses when they have replaced them.
“Families or at least couples used to live in tenements way more than they do now as well.”
A second asked: “Is there anything our government is doing to fix this or is it just getting worse with the whole housing crisis?”
Another replied: “They are actively making it worse with things like rent control and not focusing on increasing provision of housing.
“Until they revise their approach it’s going to get worse.”
A fourth commented: “One of the issues is they are building lots of homes in places where the population is decreasing and not enough in the central belt.
“Another issue is building a house is absurdly expensive now.
“When I started working at a Housing Association in Scotland about 15 years ago you could build a three-bed house for £60-70,000 depending on how many you were doing.
Now it’s £160,000 at least. In just 15 years. While social rents have (rightly) been kept low.
“The economics have really gotten to a point where a Housing Association has to sell over half the properties they build to make a new development work.
“10 years ago it was 20% sold.”
Another said: “Full of f***ing Airbnb and empty holiday homes of the rich. And tax write off empty property of foreign interests.”
Speaking today, housing, homelessness and fair work convener Jane Meagher said: “With greater numbers of people facing homelessness, some of the most expensive private rents in the UK and insufficient funding from the Scottish Government to build more homes, the pressures on temporary accommodation are unprecedented.
“The stark choice facing us is that we either house people in unlicensed HMOs or people will have to sleep on the streets which no one wants.
“We’re in a critical position that means we need to escalate our efforts to address this.
“We urgently need to move people out of these properties and find alternative temporary accommodation.
“We’re planning to use existing council stock, speed up the turnaround of void homes to a minimum standard, continue to encourage unlicensed providers to apply for their licence, source other suitable temporary accommodation in the city, and engage with registered social landlords to encourage them to maintain the increased rate of allocations to homeless households.
“This has not been an easy decision to make, and I appreciate how difficult these changes are.
“I’d urge any tenant who is worried to contact their housing officer for advice and support.”
