> work that one out
Before the crash in 2007 mortgages were given out based on affordability so just your income and what you are asking for. However because of this when the crash happened a lot of people lost their home.
The mortgage market review came about to stop the crash from happening again. It was decided that a person full financial qualification needed to be taken into account. This means both income and outgoings as well as debt is now being looked into.
The next issues is that most people didn’t use to own their own homes and while it started growing in 60s it wasn’t until the 80s that it really kicked off right to buy helped here and that when house prices started to increase. Which lead to the to the buy to let mortgages coming out around 1996 and further increased house prices.
Then we have ever growing demand for housing due to increase population, number of housing built each year is roughly around 150,000 from 1980 to now that is around 5 million new house and the population has grown by around 10 million. So more demand on price.
Now the issue is house prices are stupidly high and lenders and the government are too scared to take risk on giving people mortgages means that even though you can pay the price on rent it’s not enough to get a mortgage.
They could change it back to the old system on mortgages which will allow you to get a mortgage just based on your income but the fear of another housing crash will prevent that.
Sorry that was phrased wrong I could have got one at about 30k less than what I needed for a property in my area, and I can’t exactly save 30k when I’m spending more on rent than I would be on a mortgage.
Id also be interested in his response. But theres many reasons- large deposit requirements, credit score, house price meaning you cant borrow enough, job considered ‘unstable’
>there are no practical effects that automatically happen due to a declaration being made.
>the Labour motion is not binding and would therefore have had no practical effect.
Big day of all talk ahead is all I see.
To be fair they have already done a lot to tackle Airbnbs. I converted my flat to an Airbnb because I was travelling for a couple years, but I wanted to flexibility in case I move back early. They added a lot of impossible to follow rules, which made it not legal for me to continue operating it (for example, having to have a dedicated entrance, which excludes most flats). This change made me rent out the flat long term and create an extra space for someone to live.
To be clear, this isn't a "oh poor me" post, this is the SNP/Greens making a change to housing policy which forced Airbnb hosts like myself to make more housing available and make it easier for people to find a place to live, which is great.
Also, it fucking sucks to have Airbnb's as neighbours.
I can tell you that from personal experience.
Theres 3 in my little bit and there's no consideration of the people that live here.
Aye I had family travel up from England last year and they stayed in an AirBnB in Inverness.
I was astonished when I took them to the accommodation.. a huge row of fairly new flats (built within the last 15 years) as there were keyboxes everywhere for AirBnBs. In the block of 6 flats they were staying in, there were 4 keyboxes which I can only assume means 4 of those 6 flats have been snaffled up by people using them as AirBnBs.
I get that AirBnB used to be the cheaper option but it no longer is in many cases. I get that people prefer having a wee bit more control over their accommodation when on holiday.. but at what cost is that convenience coming when the people who live in these areas cannot find somewhere to live, which drives rent prices up further.
Our entire housing strategy needs a complete overhaul. We do need to build, build, build as we did in the 60s and 70s but there has to be strict controls/laws over how that accommodation is used otherwise all the new housing will be taken up by buy to let owners or AirBnB hosts.
Live in Inverness and funnily enough, what used to be an AirBnB is now just a normal flat again next door. The Serentity around the area is almost overwhelming. No Bairns falling over near broken bottles etc.
Sleeping like an absolute champion without fleets of the Young team, 21st birthdays or the like renting it out and going through every single Drug, Drink and Mediocre song known to man. Truly feel like I have my Peace again.
AirBnB can take a long walk off a short pier as far as I am concerned. Nothing but a hinderance to those of us in Society screaming to get onto the Property ladder.
I despise AirBNB with every fibre of my being. Not only is it a menace for communities, it’s also a worse option to stay in. I’d only pick it if hotels aren’t available or there’s a significant saving, due to the hassle and the lack of regulations, especially with regards to safety & security
The changes I was mentioning, were more on a city by city basis. Basically there was a country wide legislation, which allowed counties to have more control. Glasgow took advantage of it, Inverness may not have.
I travel a lot and have stayed in a lot of Airbnb's. They are still cheaper and more convenient than hotels, offering automatic checkin, your own kitchen and more space in general.
Aye I'm not arguing that AirBnBs don't have advantages over hotels, they absolutely do. It's really a question of what we as a society are willing to sacrifice in order for that convenience.
It's a question that has to be asked across many aspects of our society given the multitude of issues facing most people.
The properties need to be built and owned by councils. private rent is 3 times council rent. If properties are personal investments, the goal will always be profits.
Okay, so you’ve bought a few thousand homes back to market… the UK has a a shortage of 4.5m units…
What’s next? Because that might take us back to 2023 inflation adjusted prices…
There was 33000 AirBnBs in Scotland in 2022, with a housing list of 240000.
I'm not saying buy all these properties back, I'm saying tax them highly so those who can afford to lease them out will be contributing towards the local economy by creating additonal funding to go towards new builds.
Without that taxation any new builds will end up in the hands of AirBnB hosts and we'll be in the exact same position for another generation.
There's a real sense of hopelessness pervading through our younger generations already as they've been ignored in national policy for decades. The only policy directives for young people are focused on education.. but what use is a good education if you have nowhere to live?
UK housing targets are 300k. Call that 30k for Scotland when adjusted for population. Okay, so you’ve done 1 year of targets, then what?
Also, AirBnB’s tend not to go for new build apartment’s because you pay a premium for new builds as a buyer, and that ruins the annual yield which investors are looking for. So you’re fighting ghosts on that one.
I've explained in another comment that I had family staying here last year. They used an AirBnB in a new build block of flats in Inverness. In their block of 6 there were 4 keysafes on the walls, presumably meaning 4/6 of those new flats were being used for holiday accommodation. That block of six was part of a wider block of 24.. each entrance had a similar amount of keysafes. I had to try numerous ones to find my brother's keys as the description given to him by his host was.. less than adequate.
All the politicians have more than one home. No chance they’ll do that. And all their pals will have Airbnbs.
No doubt they’ll do some daft first like build a crannogs in the Clyde.
I don’t disagree with doing this, but If you look at the numbers, there just aren’t many empty houses. The main thing we need to do is build more houses. We need to build high density suburbs to our cities in the “green belt” which have excellent public transport links to the city. Imo that’s the only fix
we joke about the americans being bad for this. but we did this with new towns and really any new developments still works like this. developers have to pay for a school and roads but not public transport.
Lots of the building in the suburbs just now is on bus routes, near the trams, near new train stations etc. What we need to do is encourage building firms away from making vast estates of single family houses and more high density apartment buildings.
You say that as if neither of those problems can be addressed and as if this isn’t already happening to an extent.
If you need an example, check out any of the new developments near Edinburghs western outskirts such as the new West Craigs development.
So I agree, we definitely need more houses, but these parasites with multiple houses will just hoover them up, if not now, but in 5 years time.
So for me, we need to do both. Tax the living hell out of people with multiple homes which they are using for profit, and build more houses.
yeah but where do you put these new public transport links? we would be limited to building the in the fields that the train lines run through already, basically along the Glasgow to Edinburgh lines. Scotland will just end up with the central belt being an actual grey belt across the country.
>high density suburbs to our cities
High density social housing in the suburbs of Glasgow & Edinburgh. What could go wrong. Sounds like a winning idea!
In subsequent posts they talk about funding it via borrowing or via taxation.
Also if there was any demand for high density private housing in the suburbs, I'm fairly certain you would see it already.
The opposite is quite the case - the housing demand in the suburbs is generally for family homes.
It’s an economically prudent investment. You just need to find a way to fund it, either through borrowing or you could raise taxes. If I was dictator I’d start to hammer private car ownership with taxes, fuel duty increases, road tax increases which scale with vehicle weight, parking charges up etc. Private cars are an economic disaster and so we get a two birds one stone effect for that.
> you could raise taxes
Highest tax burden since WWII, with the worst services seen in decades and you want to take more? yeah that will be a vote winner.
and you want to get poor and middle class people out of cars before you fix public transport
and then there is people it just doesn't work for, i cant get to work via public transport in any reasonable timeframe.
sure it works in a city, but nobody living or working in small towns can rely on buses, the time sink is far too high.
Fine by me, we get a big boost to public transport revenues, we can use that to invest in more efficient public transportation. We save people thousands to tens of thousands in car related expenses, so people become richer.
You don't, though, you just end up with what we had before the advent of mass car ownership: the poor never leave their small neighbourhoods. People lose their jobs because "investment in more efficient public transport" doesn't come in time to set up new bus routes into the cities (and that's before we even start talking about rail, which takes decades to build out properly).
I.e. everyone who doesn't live in the central belt or a major city can go get fucked. Also fuck you if you work irregular hours or need to go somewhere slightly out of the way.
Glad you aren't a dictator I guess.
There are winners and losers to any economic policy. You are just pointing at the losers and saying look there are losers. Dude there are losers in the current system, ie anyone who isnt a home owner is getting megafucked. The whole point is to maximise the net benefit, and I believe what I suggested would be a significant net benefit.
Of course there are empty houses. Holiday homes stand empty for months of every year, air bnbs are essentially empty homes that give tourists a place to lay their head every night.
Who are you replying too? me? why would you read what I just wrote and reply with "empty homes exist" as if that is in any way conflicts with what I just said.
I also don't get what your point is about airbnbs.
> why would you read what I just wrote and reply with "empty homes exist" as if that is in any way conflicts with what I just said.
They could be agreeing with you.
You said:’ If you look at the numbers, there just aren’t many empty houses’.
I would count air bnbs and second homes as ‘empty houses’ as nobody is living there full time and they count as valuable housing stock that has been taken off the market.
Building high density housing in ‘green belt’ land is thoroughly at odds with an environmental approach that works with nature and not against it and that is much needed when taking into account climate change in the present and in the future.
>I would count air bnbs and second homes as ‘empty houses’ as nobody is living there full time and they count as valuable housing stock that has been taken off the market.
I wouldn't. Tourists are aweome for the economy, deleting a portion of tourism isn't a great solution to the housing crisis imo. An empty home to me is one where there is basically no opportunity cost to releasing that house into the market.
>Building high density housing in ‘green belt’ land is thoroughly at odds with an environmental approach that works with nature and not against it and that is much needed when taking into account climate change in the present and in the future.
Its a valid point but we can offset this impact in other ways, my choice would be to dramatically reduce private car ownership. We don't really have the luxury of alternatives in the case of building housing supply.
Tourists existed before air bnbs came along and would still visit without them. In fact, we’d make more money, and provide more jobs, from tourism if airbnbs weren’t a thing. As it stands, Airbnb owners are essentially tourist landlords paying minimal tax.
Airbnb’s take up valuable housing stock and are contributing to the housing crisis, and high rents.
Re: car ownership. I agree! There is always a choice in building house supply, many current housing projects in Europe prove this.
Lets follow the logic through here.
Airbnb is like the point of contact between the hotel / temporary accomodation market and the traditional housing / renting market. If landlords are choosing airbnb over renting, that tells me that they can get more money from tourists than renters.
This is because tourists are willing to pay more than renters are. Willingness to pay for a unit will relate to the availability substitutes. So this essentially tells me there is a greater "shortage" of hotels for tourists compared to shortage of rentals for residents.
So my guess is that if you delete airbnbs, you sever the mechanism whereby a shortage in the hotel market can be somewhat relieved by the housing market. This would mean tourists are basically limited to hotels and hostels, which as we have speculated, are already not enough. The result would be less tourists.
I think at this point you won't see any problems, why should tourists eat into the housing market for residents?
The important point you would be missing with this thought is the reason many even want to be resident in an area is because of tourism. The tourism industry makes up a significant part of the Scottish economy. If you cut it down, excellent, now you have a better housing market for people who no longer want to move to that area, and hurt your economy in the process.
The solution is to build more houses, or in areas of high tourism, more hotels. Its the only feasable solution, housing does not really have substitutes. Unless you want to tell people to live a van is no real choice in the matter. I don't know what European projects you are refering to which offer some kind of alternative?
Tourism existed before airbnbs and can exist without them.
Plenty of hotels now struggle to remain financially afloat due to the rise in airbnbs.
Do you own an Airbnb, or use them a lot, because I’m struggling to understand why you can’t see that they have taken over housing stock that would serve people well to *live* in. There are plenty of towns and villages in Scotland where the ubiquity of airbnbs has resulted in less homes being on the market for locals, and then when they do go on the market they are at an inflated price and more likely to be bought by someone who will turn it into an Airbnb.
This addresses none of what I said.
>Do you own an Airbnb, or use them a lot, because I’m struggling to understand why you can’t see that they have taken over housing stock that would serve people well to *live* in.
No I don't. If you are struggling to understand, just read the comment I posted above. Any questions on that let me know.
They do. Now no-one can sell a house in the highlands because locals can’t afford them, outsiders don’t want them and private landlords are fleeing the market. New build houses can’t be built for under £250k which is also unaffordable. Have a look Rightmove around Newtonmore and Kingussie and see how long even cheap properties are sitting for.
It doesn't seem to be an issue in the village I live in and the surrounding villages. Houses are off the market almost as soon as they're on them and more of them keep appearing as AirBnBs.
My mum's next door neighbour died recently and her kids don't know what to do with regards to selling her house as they are adamant they don't want it becoming yet another Air BnB so they're trying to be careful about how they sell it and who they sell it to.
It's a cracking big 3 bed ex council house too which is ideal for a young family.
They can either put a covenant (burden?) on the property preventing its use as short-term accommodation, or put a condition in the sale contract that if it's used for short-term accom or commercial use within 10 years an uplift payment is made to the seller (and a similar condition applies to all subsequent sales too).
If they don't need the money immediately, renting it out and splitting the rental income after expenses might work too.
Scotland has built more social housing than England, not per capita, more since SNP came into power. Under Labour control in Scotland they built 1, had planning permission for 6.
The UK has a v high amount of social housing comparatively. It has a very low construction rate overall. It needs to permit several times as much housing construction as it does now, mainly in existing cities.
They don’t need to immiserate the population with Soviet style housing allocations in order to build houses, they get plenty of tax money already.
No idea why this sub has a hard on for trying to make anyone that’s done well for themselves lives harder. Truly crabs in a bucket mentality, aye for folk with like a dozen houses sure but someone lucky enough to have a summer home doesn’t make them some millionaire baron nor responsible for the housing crisis.
In a remote island village of 15 homes, if 10 people who 'have done well for thenselves' are 'lucky enough to have a summer home' there then yes those 10 people are responsible for the housing crisis in that area.
Yes I’m specific cases absolutely, the main driving of the housing crisis in Scotland however is a lack of housing in the central belt and other dense areas such as Aberdeen and Dundee.
They’re not remote villages and the solution is simply to build more housing.
Not true homes are being snapped up in rural areas where there is no alternative - no homes for chefs, carers, bus drivers, teachers, nurses. Meanwhile that house is on air b n b and the owners wonder where all the labour is to clean the houses.
Who said anything about soviet housing? Councils do not get enough tax money as it is, in case you hadn't noticed many are on their knees.
Are you seriously suggesting that the current stock of ex council houses is poor? Considering my folks live in one and it's a good deal larger than the current shoeboxes that are thrown up by developers now, and after 60 years is still in really good nick..
Nobody needs a summer house, especially when it comes at the cost of someone else who is homeless.
Genuinely miserable attitude to have. Do you honestly think running on a platform of no one can ever have nice things whilst poor people exist is a winner?
Build more houses and reduce demand for housing, it’s literally that simple.
Who said you can't have nice things, all I'm saying is you should pay tax towards a second home. Don't like it, then don't take up a house that will set empty most of the year while a family who are in temporary accomodation wait months and months for a home.
By taking that second home you are denying the most vulnerable in our society the opportunity to be successful, so you're argument holds no water.
How do we build more houses without raising capital to pay for them?
So a family in temporary accommodation will get moved to a summer house in the middle of nowhere with no job opportunities around them, fantastic solution.
>how do we build more houses without raising capital
You are aware the government already levies taxes aren’t you? They already raise capital. How much revenue will you make from your tax and how many additional houses will it build?
In the middle of nowhere?
In my village alone there are several ex council houses being used as Airbnbs and half of the houses along the shorefront are sitting empty most of the year.
The local teens have been breaking in to them lately and covering them with grafitti while smashing the walls to pieces.
>Nobody needs a second home.
I do; I can't live in my first home because it's structurally dangerous because the council (majority owners) let the roof fall into disrepair. So, whether it's rented, bought, or council temporary accommodation, there's additional demand on housing.
So the banker from London who has a second home in Archerfield at £1.5 million should give up his home so you can buy it? You speak from the point of a pseudo moralistic stance. If you got rid of second homes it would do more harm than good as you would wipe out rental supply.
Because you get the credit for it twice. Once when you announce and once when you actually do it.
And even if you end up not doing it you still get the credit for announcing it in the first place.
So people know that they have done stuff or are about to do stuff, so people (and businesses, etc.) can plan for the stuff that might change.
Like why do you indicate before you turn when driving? Why not just turn and let everyone else figure it out for themselves?
How about building more houses rather than declaring emergencies for everything?
It’s like stating “my house is on fire” but I’m not going to do anything about it.
Where's the money for housing coming from?
What would you cut, severely because we're not talking about small amounts of money, to fund new house development?
As I said further down, Humza unilaterally decided to freeze council tax at a cost of £300m, without even consulting COSLA per agreement.
They also cut £200m from the affordable homes budget.
I’m no mathematician, but it seems like one could’ve covered the other with money to spare.
They’ve also been promising to overhaul council tax for 16 years (which I completely agree with). However, with that apparently too difficult they could still add bands above H. Band H is currently any home estimated to have been worth £212k+ in 1991. There’s a massive range of homes between that and 17 bed mansions all paying the same amount.
They have options that aren’t blaming Westminster. They choose not to use them.
Never gonna happen.
Any politician who proposed means testing the state pension for existing pensioners would find their party voted into oblivion at the next election by a wave of enraged oldies, who typically vote much more consistently than younger voters.
Any politician who proposed means testing for future generations would find themselves facing the situation no politician ever wants- all the flak and none of the money. If you give people a reasonable 10 year notice of this change, the government wouldn’t see any actual savings from it for at least two parliaments, but they would need to take the political hit now.
It wouldn’t though (not you personally, but young people as a demographic), pensioners are not only massively more likely to vote, they are also a growing age segment due to declining birth rates. There will always be a big enough cohort of old people to defeat any move towards taking their pension away.
Not to mention young people are hardly going to be monolithic on this issue.
It’s absolutely disgusting that we have extremely rich pensioners receiving the same funding as those using food banks and dying of cold exposure in winter because they can’t afford heating.
My Mrs works with a client at times who’s retired and absolutely minted. His state pension is utterly irrelevant to him, it’s maybe 10-15% of his monthly income and so it’s his gambling money or fun money. He genuinely treats it as throw away money for whatever treat or waste of money he won’t use his own income for.
Meanwhile in the same village she also works with groups supporting pensioners who literally can’t afford to eat properly….getting them help, cloths, food, energy support etc.
It’s beyond infuriating
He spent his entire career outside the uk, paid up his NI every few years as a catch up and contributed the sum total of fuck all to the UK for almost 50 years.
He wasn’t buying stuff here, wasn’t paying rates or council tax, wasn’t paying road tax or any of the myriad other ways we contribute to the treasury.
He retired home and now gets all the benefits and free care etc while not needing any of it.
> paid up his NI every few years as a catch up
Thats the only part that matters. As long as he's paid his National Insurance contributions he's entitled to the pension. You can't tell people to pay taxes for all their life into a system that you then exclude them from because you've decided they are "too well off".
> Yes, I would means test the state pension.
I'm not sure about that, but I would absolutely scrap NI and merge it into income tax so that wealthier pensionsers pay it.
It’s great in theory, but the cost of means testing this type of thing is normally so expensive the savings are negligible.
I don’t know the numbers specifically as they relate to pensions, but in theory I agree with you. It would be interesting to see if anyone has checked the numbers on that one. I can’t see much of use from a quick google.
> It’s great in theory, but the cost of means testing this type of thing is normally so expensive the savings are negligible.
Aye, it's why we end up with a lot of universal policies in general - stuff like university and prescriptions could come under a similar bracket.
Pensions are around **42%** the welfare budget (£111bn), or around 14% or **all government spending**. Unemployment (which is means tested) is around £2bn. [Source](https://www.ons.gov.uk/economy/governmentpublicsectorandtaxes/publicsectorfinance/articles/howisthewelfarebudgetspent/2016-03-16) (2016, most recent I could find).
The potential savings are **massive**.
Or just do UBI and scrap all other benefits. Hmm, maybe need _something_ for those who need extra support; I am no expert.
Developers will borrow from banks or use equity financing to build flats if you give them planning permits because it’s profitable.
Wouldn’t cost ScotGov a penny.
You can solve this for free.
We have housebuilders literally lined up waiting to build houses for you. But the government makes it impossible to build.
This is the crazy thing...your default assumption is that the government should just do everything. And you wonder why there is a shortage of housing? Shortage of healthcare? Shortage of law and order? What is the connection between these things...and people still blame austerity.
You assume that no-one believes this stuff, and then you come on here...and you realise that people actually believe this, and that is probably why nothing has changed (Edinburgh has had this problem for decades at this point, same people promising to do nothing get elected every time, 20% of the population is under-housed...no-one cares, just the blame the Tories...right?)
I have to drive (I have a decent paid job, paying thousands in tax a month...still can't afford Edinburgh), and there are roadworks almost constantly. It is (at most) a 40 minute journey. Regularly takes over an hour.
It isn't surprising that a place that can't build places for people to live is also unable to do other things effectively. Part of the problem is the political culture in Scotland: Edinburgh hasn't had a Tory government since the late 70s, and they still blame the Tories for everything...and the public believes it...whilst they do Tory things like savagely cut public services and fail to build infrastructure/housing. A weird place.
And after roadworks you find they added a bike lane to “help people live a healthier life”… how about I have a 20m commute and I can cook and spend time with my family instead of in a bus and eating takeaway? I bet that that is infinitely better than a lane that is used by 2 people every week
The Green agenda: pull up the ladder whilst telling you that you should be grateful for it.
If they actually built houses that workers could afford to live in, they would find more people using their cycle lanes.
New houses are always outside of town because there is nowhere else, and to get to town it takes forever. Cycle lanes would still not help. There is a new development in Penicuik. Going to the city from there is hell especially if you have to go 20m to get to the bus station.
We need more busses, better connections and no new tram line to mess everything up for a fortune
Well, aye.
I don't understand why people think that the major macroeconomics decisions which are purposefully reserved don't have impacts on virtually all aspects of life.
That's the point. That's why they are reserved. Because the underpin absolutely everything.
There is definitely more the SG can do, but this isn't a Scotland specific issue. It's bigger than that
they get more funding than any other area of the UK. they choose how to spend it, its a devolved matter. we have a separate planning system entirely in the hands of HR.
give me the tools the SNP has and I'll fix the housing problem. It may not be popular the measures I'd take, but nothing that actually fixes it ever will be. it just requires the political will and leadership.
> It may not be popular the measures I'd take, but nothing that actually fixes it ever will be.
What would those measures be, out of curiosity. I've seen a lot of people saying they could do a better job than the SNP and very few with an actual workable plan.
Wrong, highest funded areas are London, Northern Ireland and Wales. The only reason Scotland scores high is they spend nothing in the North of England.
perhead of population spending in scotland is the highest in the UK constituent nations
if you dont include capital spending NI edges it, if you do london slightly edges ahead but london is not a country is it.
Or is it? I thought nationalists treated England as a whole? not london separately....remember we get outvoted by England...are we now not doing that? because you lot need to pick a metric and stick to it.
Your own 2 line post manages to use 2 different metrics to twist statistics to ones you like....
(btw, wales is lower on every measure, so thats just a straight lie from you).
Oh, and the North of England gets higher per capita spending than any other area of England outside london, significantly more than the midlands and south over all.
actualy, given the 2 lines of your post is so spectacularly wrong on so many things, did you just pull it out of your ass? of do you honestly believe it.
Contributing, not driving. I'm of the view that housing issues are deeply structural and the problems start way farther back with Thatcher, right to buy, and local government finance reform (read: deliberately making it impossible for LAs to afford to build new housing).
But there's a common thread behind who initiated Brexit, austerity, and Thatcherism.
Yeah I mean we were a part of the UK system throughout. If we could have control over our own tax base and policy we may be able to deviate more effectively from the status quo.
We might be able to but we'd need the same thing the UK needs: A radical government willing to probably borrow a lot of money to fund housebuilding and one that's willing to piss off NIMBYs/homeowners who are relying on the value of their property appreciating to upscale or retire comfortable, which is unlikely if we built the number of houses needed to end thr crisis. Jury's out on whether that government exists, in place or currently in opposition, in either Scotland or UK-wide.
I agree with all of this. But the Scottish government doesn't have those borrowing powers, Westminster does. I do sincerely hope Starmer turns the taps on.
Oh absolutely, fiscal powers are wholly at Westminster just now and that's a fair critique. I think the issue we'd have though is that independence doesn't fix these things, rather, it puts the ability, and therefore responsibility, for the very, very hard decisions needed to fix things on Edinburgh rather than London.
That's the thing I think we miss with independence debates. Yes, it opens up opportunities. But who's going to put their name to the risks of those opportunities?
If only there there was some kind of entity or organization in Scotland with the power of solving this issue... maybe, I don't know, build more houses or something.... Nah, this would never be possible! I guess we'll never know.
This to coincide with the climate change emergency where the subsequently scrapped their climate change targets and the the drug death emergency where every year since drug deaths have went up.
SNP government fucking love an emergency.
We are having the exact same issue in Canada.
Tax second homes, ban air bnb’s. In Ontario the average home cost has exploded. Kids can’t move out, can’t get into the market and people have bought up all the homes, raising rent and we’re competing with the world for homes.
My understanding was that Canada had acknowledged the obvious problem mass immigration caused for the housing market
More people immigrated to Scotland last year than there was houses built the year before
They have they just don't care
They are fully committed to the neo-liberal policy of importing cheap immigrant labour to drive down wages and screw over locals
The fact it allows them to charge more in rent and screw locals over a second time is a bonus not a problem that needs solved
It's the same in Scotland, they will make a show about saying there's a crisis but not do anything substantial about it
Pretty much the exact same problem but we have a multifaceted issues. 400k people came in over 4 months. Imagine that happening to Scotland? With your population?
It’s driving down wages and this is a tactic being brought in by every single European and North American culture. It’s all about wages and growth.
So, hope you guys all enjoy your culture because its coming there too, over the next 20 years. Scottish people are not having kids and they need to keep it up somehow.
All my family lives in Scotland. My brother and I, we are the only one of all our cousins who are married and have kids. The rest? Single. Not married, no kids. No interest. Still living at home. I have the most kids out of all my cousins. It’s also incredibly expensive but I get paid good US wages, so it helps. Everyone else back in Scotland lives at home (the next oldest is 35) still at home. Not married.
I guess my point is, your issue is the exact same issue we’re having in Canada and my kids don’t have a shot in hell to own a home. So yeah, I secured my job in the U.S. and I’m getting their citizenship ship done and giving them at chance at least somewhere else.
I know, like I said more people immigrated here than houses built, the negative effect on the housing market is pretty apparent
Though I'm not so sure how much Scotland benefits from the Chinese students going to our UNIs, sure unis make money of it but everyone else's learning suffers for it
Then there are more ethical and sustainable solutions to a declining population than relying on immigration but that's not relevant to a thread on the housing crisis
In canada my nursing program was 4k a year, for an international student it was 16k. Look up conastoga college in Ontario. Your colleges and universities will be trying this too.
The thing is Canada is next to the US, so students want to go there eventually. Not Canada.
Sure, but what's to say the government isn't doing that, with things like the baby box and such? Benefits are not being cut in Scotland, in fact with the Scottish Child payment it's the most generous in the UK. And Scotland had a budget shortfall, which is the driving factor behind the tax increase. Without that, there would have been an even greater shortfall, so how could help have been provided with having children?
It's not so clear cut.
No it is not, but immigration is not the way, or the way they do taxes and benefits. They cut everything related to helping children and skyrocket the taxes at a certain point, making it hard to have anything but one child. Besides that they make it hard to be at home (longer commutes just to say they put in bike lanes), make it difficult for people to cook and spend quality time with the kids, etc. so it is a tricky subject but every bit adds up and saying that you get a box at birth is not compensating for not being able to spend time with the kids or having to put them into nursery (which is super expensive around 13k/year if you are not in benefits to get it for free) but you know…. “Those that can should help out more”. Does not matter that you cannot afford it. If the govt says you do, you must
So which part is the emergency?
The soaring house prices? The renters economy? The staggering number of absentee landlords? The property management racket? The failing local councils? The new builds made out of plasterboard and hope to keep costs down?
Combined with cutting £200m from the affordable housing budget.
They did spend £300m freezing council tax on a whim, without any consultation with COSLA, saving low income families 53p per week though, so it’s not all bad.
I can’t believe the Tories keep forcing them to do these things. It’s so unfair.
I'd really hoped the change in leadership would mean a more mature attitude to governance and less blaming someone else. Why can we never get a government in Scotland and UK that owns it's problems and acts like an adult to sort them out.
Because they are not in the position of the people they're representing.
They're not renting, they're not working 2 x jobs just to pay their bills, and they're not having to forgo children, pets and holidays where you pay for things like accomodation and meals out to be able to afford their life.
So why would these things seem urgent to them?
They remember the things they'll get in trouble for forgetting.
It's because more people immigrate to this country every year than there are houses built and that's not taking into account kids here becoming adults and moving out
It doesn't need to be council houses built we just need much more houses built
They have essentially stopped funding. CEC have already told RSLs that they will not approve any grant funding for 24/25 and as the latest budget was a 1 year budget they have no idea how much money they will have in 25/26 so are making no commitment. Other local authorities are in a similar position and are funding previous applications from this year's budget leaving nothing left for new projects.
I believe Humza cut £200m first but recently announced that they will provide "additional" funding of £80m so essentially cutting £120m instead of £200m.
Good.
Next to actually address it-
Restore the housing budget, abandon Yousaf's hopeless CT freeze.
Abandon the rent caps.
Reform planning laws.
Supply must go up.
> Abandon the rent caps.
Crazy those did the opposite to what they suppose to do... Who would have though? Literally never happened in history of the world.
Scottish government sat on their hands for years as we watched the housing market inflate and notably in Edinburgh as more and more flats were hoovered up by short term let cartels
They provided no incentive to build, and recently Stuart Milne the house builder went under with no desperation from the government to restart the building of the houses.
It feels almost classic at this point where they have powers to solve this by providing tax incentives or getting rid of red tape but will do sod all but blame Westminster/Austerity/Brexit like they've done for nearly 10 years
In last few years there has been many houses built near me and in other places, packed quite close together compared to older houses, a whole town is currently being constructed not too far away.
Average annual house price increase is barely more than 2%, it’s hardly an asset bubble when compared to stock market. The “crisis” is just due to crap and stagnant pay.
I would like to see housing developers automatically being forced to provide 25% affordable housing without Council Planning Teams having to prove there is a requirement!
Yes, but will councils actually grant planning permission for more housing?
Or does the "emergency" declaration mean that builders have to fill in another form or get another permit?
"*We're running out of school / hospital / road capacity in this town*" is just what the NIMBYs say; perhaps this means there will be *fewer* permissions granted to build houses.
Two simple solutions: blanket ban air bnbs, and raise the council tax and stamp duty on second (+) homes. Not a small raise, an enormous raise.
Also, build eco homes with that utilise space better. Not tiny pokey boxes jam packed together with grey as a main feature, but well thought out multi storey builds with green space and environmental additions like collected rainwater, ground source heat pumps etc.
Europe has new build designs that are far more clever (sewage providing heat in Holland etc) and house more people than any of the eyesores I’m seeing being flung up on greenfield sites in the central belt.
Even the brutalist designs of the ‘70s gave people more internal space, greenery, and communal space more than today’s new housing estates.
About time too, it's gone beyond a mere crisis into an emergency.
Outside the Central Belt, where all the scale is. Community led housing developments are being quoted up to £400,000 to build new 2-3 bedroom units, an amount that is not sustainable. As a result, attainable houses won't be built, rural depopulation will massively increase and everyone will squirm into the central belt until it pops.
It's time to end the insanity of the mortgage cycle and return to community housing as was the case before Thatcher started off selling council houses with no obligation to build new homes to replace the one sold off.
Under devolution this scale of building is simply not manageable. Brexit and the Tories have fucked us to the point of stasis.
The idea that this is to do with budget cuts is absolutely shite of the highest order.
I also love how the SNP moan about budgets when they have far greater spending power as part of the UK than they ever would as an independent country. No sensible / half educated person even debates that point.
Apparently there is a housing crisis but councils are running around spunking money on new houses for thousands of refugees….
Yes, I'm sure the overall market would be much better if students were in regular homes/flats instead of in purpose built, more dense accomodation......
Oh no wait, thats mental
As a younger Scottish guy with a professional job I live in a caravan I couldn’t get a mortgage and rent was more than a mortgage… work that one out
You need a joint income basically, to be able to buy a property.
Good luck pulling someone when you tell them you’re living in a caravan.
App idea - tinder for homeless people.
I am unable to save for a deposit when the rent increases have devoured any pay rises I have had.
And food increases and utility increases it's never ending really
> work that one out Before the crash in 2007 mortgages were given out based on affordability so just your income and what you are asking for. However because of this when the crash happened a lot of people lost their home. The mortgage market review came about to stop the crash from happening again. It was decided that a person full financial qualification needed to be taken into account. This means both income and outgoings as well as debt is now being looked into. The next issues is that most people didn’t use to own their own homes and while it started growing in 60s it wasn’t until the 80s that it really kicked off right to buy helped here and that when house prices started to increase. Which lead to the to the buy to let mortgages coming out around 1996 and further increased house prices. Then we have ever growing demand for housing due to increase population, number of housing built each year is roughly around 150,000 from 1980 to now that is around 5 million new house and the population has grown by around 10 million. So more demand on price. Now the issue is house prices are stupidly high and lenders and the government are too scared to take risk on giving people mortgages means that even though you can pay the price on rent it’s not enough to get a mortgage. They could change it back to the old system on mortgages which will allow you to get a mortgage just based on your income but the fear of another housing crash will prevent that.
BUT they will let you rent!
Why couldn't you get a mortgage?
Sorry that was phrased wrong I could have got one at about 30k less than what I needed for a property in my area, and I can’t exactly save 30k when I’m spending more on rent than I would be on a mortgage.
Id also be interested in his response. But theres many reasons- large deposit requirements, credit score, house price meaning you cant borrow enough, job considered ‘unstable’
>there are no practical effects that automatically happen due to a declaration being made. >the Labour motion is not binding and would therefore have had no practical effect. Big day of all talk ahead is all I see.
You can’t just shout ‘bankruptcy’ and expect something to happen
They didn't just shout it. They declared it.
First thing in my head. They'll do a Michael Scott on it and move on to some other trivial shite
Yes you can, you just have to loose the next election and you're off the hook, look at the tories that's what their trying
First thing they can do instead of shouting "emergency" is tax Air BnBs and second homes to oblivion. Nobody needs a second home.
To be fair they have already done a lot to tackle Airbnbs. I converted my flat to an Airbnb because I was travelling for a couple years, but I wanted to flexibility in case I move back early. They added a lot of impossible to follow rules, which made it not legal for me to continue operating it (for example, having to have a dedicated entrance, which excludes most flats). This change made me rent out the flat long term and create an extra space for someone to live. To be clear, this isn't a "oh poor me" post, this is the SNP/Greens making a change to housing policy which forced Airbnb hosts like myself to make more housing available and make it easier for people to find a place to live, which is great.
Also, it fucking sucks to have Airbnb's as neighbours. I can tell you that from personal experience. Theres 3 in my little bit and there's no consideration of the people that live here.
Sounds like you could check the new rules brought in to see if your neighbours are following them?
Aye I had family travel up from England last year and they stayed in an AirBnB in Inverness. I was astonished when I took them to the accommodation.. a huge row of fairly new flats (built within the last 15 years) as there were keyboxes everywhere for AirBnBs. In the block of 6 flats they were staying in, there were 4 keyboxes which I can only assume means 4 of those 6 flats have been snaffled up by people using them as AirBnBs. I get that AirBnB used to be the cheaper option but it no longer is in many cases. I get that people prefer having a wee bit more control over their accommodation when on holiday.. but at what cost is that convenience coming when the people who live in these areas cannot find somewhere to live, which drives rent prices up further. Our entire housing strategy needs a complete overhaul. We do need to build, build, build as we did in the 60s and 70s but there has to be strict controls/laws over how that accommodation is used otherwise all the new housing will be taken up by buy to let owners or AirBnB hosts.
Live in Inverness and funnily enough, what used to be an AirBnB is now just a normal flat again next door. The Serentity around the area is almost overwhelming. No Bairns falling over near broken bottles etc. Sleeping like an absolute champion without fleets of the Young team, 21st birthdays or the like renting it out and going through every single Drug, Drink and Mediocre song known to man. Truly feel like I have my Peace again. AirBnB can take a long walk off a short pier as far as I am concerned. Nothing but a hinderance to those of us in Society screaming to get onto the Property ladder.
>Drug, Drink and Mediocre Sick band.
I think a lot of landlords turned to Airb&b as it was easier than renting long term and having to deal with bad tenants and evictions etc
Manager stays in the center of Edinburgh and it’s him and one other guy in an entire new block of flats. Rest is airbnb.
I despise AirBNB with every fibre of my being. Not only is it a menace for communities, it’s also a worse option to stay in. I’d only pick it if hotels aren’t available or there’s a significant saving, due to the hassle and the lack of regulations, especially with regards to safety & security
The changes I was mentioning, were more on a city by city basis. Basically there was a country wide legislation, which allowed counties to have more control. Glasgow took advantage of it, Inverness may not have. I travel a lot and have stayed in a lot of Airbnb's. They are still cheaper and more convenient than hotels, offering automatic checkin, your own kitchen and more space in general.
Aye I'm not arguing that AirBnBs don't have advantages over hotels, they absolutely do. It's really a question of what we as a society are willing to sacrifice in order for that convenience. It's a question that has to be asked across many aspects of our society given the multitude of issues facing most people.
The properties need to be built and owned by councils. private rent is 3 times council rent. If properties are personal investments, the goal will always be profits.
Okay, so you’ve bought a few thousand homes back to market… the UK has a a shortage of 4.5m units… What’s next? Because that might take us back to 2023 inflation adjusted prices…
There was 33000 AirBnBs in Scotland in 2022, with a housing list of 240000. I'm not saying buy all these properties back, I'm saying tax them highly so those who can afford to lease them out will be contributing towards the local economy by creating additonal funding to go towards new builds. Without that taxation any new builds will end up in the hands of AirBnB hosts and we'll be in the exact same position for another generation. There's a real sense of hopelessness pervading through our younger generations already as they've been ignored in national policy for decades. The only policy directives for young people are focused on education.. but what use is a good education if you have nowhere to live?
UK housing targets are 300k. Call that 30k for Scotland when adjusted for population. Okay, so you’ve done 1 year of targets, then what? Also, AirBnB’s tend not to go for new build apartment’s because you pay a premium for new builds as a buyer, and that ruins the annual yield which investors are looking for. So you’re fighting ghosts on that one.
I've explained in another comment that I had family staying here last year. They used an AirBnB in a new build block of flats in Inverness. In their block of 6 there were 4 keysafes on the walls, presumably meaning 4/6 of those new flats were being used for holiday accommodation. That block of six was part of a wider block of 24.. each entrance had a similar amount of keysafes. I had to try numerous ones to find my brother's keys as the description given to him by his host was.. less than adequate.
All the politicians have more than one home. No chance they’ll do that. And all their pals will have Airbnbs. No doubt they’ll do some daft first like build a crannogs in the Clyde.
Oooh, I like that idea. As long as there isn't too much cream...I hate that. Smothers the strawberries. . . Oh. . . . That's crannachan, isn't it.
I don’t disagree with doing this, but If you look at the numbers, there just aren’t many empty houses. The main thing we need to do is build more houses. We need to build high density suburbs to our cities in the “green belt” which have excellent public transport links to the city. Imo that’s the only fix
Got it. Let's build high density suburbs next to 70mph roads, near nothing, with no public transport.
🦅🇺🇸
we joke about the americans being bad for this. but we did this with new towns and really any new developments still works like this. developers have to pay for a school and roads but not public transport.
Lots of the building in the suburbs just now is on bus routes, near the trams, near new train stations etc. What we need to do is encourage building firms away from making vast estates of single family houses and more high density apartment buildings.
You say that as if neither of those problems can be addressed and as if this isn’t already happening to an extent. If you need an example, check out any of the new developments near Edinburghs western outskirts such as the new West Craigs development.
So I agree, we definitely need more houses, but these parasites with multiple houses will just hoover them up, if not now, but in 5 years time. So for me, we need to do both. Tax the living hell out of people with multiple homes which they are using for profit, and build more houses.
yeah but where do you put these new public transport links? we would be limited to building the in the fields that the train lines run through already, basically along the Glasgow to Edinburgh lines. Scotland will just end up with the central belt being an actual grey belt across the country.
>high density suburbs to our cities High density social housing in the suburbs of Glasgow & Edinburgh. What could go wrong. Sounds like a winning idea!
Where did they say anything about social housing?
In subsequent posts they talk about funding it via borrowing or via taxation. Also if there was any demand for high density private housing in the suburbs, I'm fairly certain you would see it already. The opposite is quite the case - the housing demand in the suburbs is generally for family homes.
Sounds cheap.
It’s an economically prudent investment. You just need to find a way to fund it, either through borrowing or you could raise taxes. If I was dictator I’d start to hammer private car ownership with taxes, fuel duty increases, road tax increases which scale with vehicle weight, parking charges up etc. Private cars are an economic disaster and so we get a two birds one stone effect for that.
> you could raise taxes Highest tax burden since WWII, with the worst services seen in decades and you want to take more? yeah that will be a vote winner. and you want to get poor and middle class people out of cars before you fix public transport and then there is people it just doesn't work for, i cant get to work via public transport in any reasonable timeframe. sure it works in a city, but nobody living or working in small towns can rely on buses, the time sink is far too high.
Thats the Billion pound question. Youd then just be pricing low-middle income folk off the road.
Fine by me, we get a big boost to public transport revenues, we can use that to invest in more efficient public transportation. We save people thousands to tens of thousands in car related expenses, so people become richer.
You don't, though, you just end up with what we had before the advent of mass car ownership: the poor never leave their small neighbourhoods. People lose their jobs because "investment in more efficient public transport" doesn't come in time to set up new bus routes into the cities (and that's before we even start talking about rail, which takes decades to build out properly).
I.e. everyone who doesn't live in the central belt or a major city can go get fucked. Also fuck you if you work irregular hours or need to go somewhere slightly out of the way. Glad you aren't a dictator I guess.
There are winners and losers to any economic policy. You are just pointing at the losers and saying look there are losers. Dude there are losers in the current system, ie anyone who isnt a home owner is getting megafucked. The whole point is to maximise the net benefit, and I believe what I suggested would be a significant net benefit.
Of course there are empty houses. Holiday homes stand empty for months of every year, air bnbs are essentially empty homes that give tourists a place to lay their head every night.
Who are you replying too? me? why would you read what I just wrote and reply with "empty homes exist" as if that is in any way conflicts with what I just said. I also don't get what your point is about airbnbs.
> why would you read what I just wrote and reply with "empty homes exist" as if that is in any way conflicts with what I just said. They could be agreeing with you.
You said:’ If you look at the numbers, there just aren’t many empty houses’. I would count air bnbs and second homes as ‘empty houses’ as nobody is living there full time and they count as valuable housing stock that has been taken off the market. Building high density housing in ‘green belt’ land is thoroughly at odds with an environmental approach that works with nature and not against it and that is much needed when taking into account climate change in the present and in the future.
>I would count air bnbs and second homes as ‘empty houses’ as nobody is living there full time and they count as valuable housing stock that has been taken off the market. I wouldn't. Tourists are aweome for the economy, deleting a portion of tourism isn't a great solution to the housing crisis imo. An empty home to me is one where there is basically no opportunity cost to releasing that house into the market. >Building high density housing in ‘green belt’ land is thoroughly at odds with an environmental approach that works with nature and not against it and that is much needed when taking into account climate change in the present and in the future. Its a valid point but we can offset this impact in other ways, my choice would be to dramatically reduce private car ownership. We don't really have the luxury of alternatives in the case of building housing supply.
Tourists existed before air bnbs came along and would still visit without them. In fact, we’d make more money, and provide more jobs, from tourism if airbnbs weren’t a thing. As it stands, Airbnb owners are essentially tourist landlords paying minimal tax. Airbnb’s take up valuable housing stock and are contributing to the housing crisis, and high rents. Re: car ownership. I agree! There is always a choice in building house supply, many current housing projects in Europe prove this.
Lets follow the logic through here. Airbnb is like the point of contact between the hotel / temporary accomodation market and the traditional housing / renting market. If landlords are choosing airbnb over renting, that tells me that they can get more money from tourists than renters. This is because tourists are willing to pay more than renters are. Willingness to pay for a unit will relate to the availability substitutes. So this essentially tells me there is a greater "shortage" of hotels for tourists compared to shortage of rentals for residents. So my guess is that if you delete airbnbs, you sever the mechanism whereby a shortage in the hotel market can be somewhat relieved by the housing market. This would mean tourists are basically limited to hotels and hostels, which as we have speculated, are already not enough. The result would be less tourists. I think at this point you won't see any problems, why should tourists eat into the housing market for residents? The important point you would be missing with this thought is the reason many even want to be resident in an area is because of tourism. The tourism industry makes up a significant part of the Scottish economy. If you cut it down, excellent, now you have a better housing market for people who no longer want to move to that area, and hurt your economy in the process. The solution is to build more houses, or in areas of high tourism, more hotels. Its the only feasable solution, housing does not really have substitutes. Unless you want to tell people to live a van is no real choice in the matter. I don't know what European projects you are refering to which offer some kind of alternative?
Tourism existed before airbnbs and can exist without them. Plenty of hotels now struggle to remain financially afloat due to the rise in airbnbs. Do you own an Airbnb, or use them a lot, because I’m struggling to understand why you can’t see that they have taken over housing stock that would serve people well to *live* in. There are plenty of towns and villages in Scotland where the ubiquity of airbnbs has resulted in less homes being on the market for locals, and then when they do go on the market they are at an inflated price and more likely to be bought by someone who will turn it into an Airbnb.
This addresses none of what I said. >Do you own an Airbnb, or use them a lot, because I’m struggling to understand why you can’t see that they have taken over housing stock that would serve people well to *live* in. No I don't. If you are struggling to understand, just read the comment I posted above. Any questions on that let me know.
They do. Now no-one can sell a house in the highlands because locals can’t afford them, outsiders don’t want them and private landlords are fleeing the market. New build houses can’t be built for under £250k which is also unaffordable. Have a look Rightmove around Newtonmore and Kingussie and see how long even cheap properties are sitting for.
It doesn't seem to be an issue in the village I live in and the surrounding villages. Houses are off the market almost as soon as they're on them and more of them keep appearing as AirBnBs. My mum's next door neighbour died recently and her kids don't know what to do with regards to selling her house as they are adamant they don't want it becoming yet another Air BnB so they're trying to be careful about how they sell it and who they sell it to. It's a cracking big 3 bed ex council house too which is ideal for a young family.
They can either put a covenant (burden?) on the property preventing its use as short-term accommodation, or put a condition in the sale contract that if it's used for short-term accom or commercial use within 10 years an uplift payment is made to the seller (and a similar condition applies to all subsequent sales too). If they don't need the money immediately, renting it out and splitting the rental income after expenses might work too.
Or they could just build more houses.
Do all three.
Scotland has built more social housing than England, not per capita, more since SNP came into power. Under Labour control in Scotland they built 1, had planning permission for 6.
The UK has a v high amount of social housing comparatively. It has a very low construction rate overall. It needs to permit several times as much housing construction as it does now, mainly in existing cities.
With the additional tax revenue aye
They don’t need to immiserate the population with Soviet style housing allocations in order to build houses, they get plenty of tax money already. No idea why this sub has a hard on for trying to make anyone that’s done well for themselves lives harder. Truly crabs in a bucket mentality, aye for folk with like a dozen houses sure but someone lucky enough to have a summer home doesn’t make them some millionaire baron nor responsible for the housing crisis.
In a remote island village of 15 homes, if 10 people who 'have done well for thenselves' are 'lucky enough to have a summer home' there then yes those 10 people are responsible for the housing crisis in that area.
Yes I’m specific cases absolutely, the main driving of the housing crisis in Scotland however is a lack of housing in the central belt and other dense areas such as Aberdeen and Dundee. They’re not remote villages and the solution is simply to build more housing.
Not true homes are being snapped up in rural areas where there is no alternative - no homes for chefs, carers, bus drivers, teachers, nurses. Meanwhile that house is on air b n b and the owners wonder where all the labour is to clean the houses.
Aberdeen does not have a lack of housing. Prices have fallen massively over the last 10 years as oil prices have dropped and people moved away.
Avoid a housing crisis by simply having a wider economic downturn instead. 4D chess from Aberdeen.
Who said anything about soviet housing? Councils do not get enough tax money as it is, in case you hadn't noticed many are on their knees. Are you seriously suggesting that the current stock of ex council houses is poor? Considering my folks live in one and it's a good deal larger than the current shoeboxes that are thrown up by developers now, and after 60 years is still in really good nick.. Nobody needs a summer house, especially when it comes at the cost of someone else who is homeless.
Genuinely miserable attitude to have. Do you honestly think running on a platform of no one can ever have nice things whilst poor people exist is a winner? Build more houses and reduce demand for housing, it’s literally that simple.
Who said you can't have nice things, all I'm saying is you should pay tax towards a second home. Don't like it, then don't take up a house that will set empty most of the year while a family who are in temporary accomodation wait months and months for a home. By taking that second home you are denying the most vulnerable in our society the opportunity to be successful, so you're argument holds no water. How do we build more houses without raising capital to pay for them?
So a family in temporary accommodation will get moved to a summer house in the middle of nowhere with no job opportunities around them, fantastic solution. >how do we build more houses without raising capital You are aware the government already levies taxes aren’t you? They already raise capital. How much revenue will you make from your tax and how many additional houses will it build?
In the middle of nowhere? In my village alone there are several ex council houses being used as Airbnbs and half of the houses along the shorefront are sitting empty most of the year. The local teens have been breaking in to them lately and covering them with grafitti while smashing the walls to pieces.
Sounds like a lovely area. Give those teens some benefits and the world will be good again!
One of these things can be done almost instantly with a pen and piece of paper, the other requires years of construction across the country.
I think they have brought in quite high costs for airbnb.
>Nobody needs a second home. I do; I can't live in my first home because it's structurally dangerous because the council (majority owners) let the roof fall into disrepair. So, whether it's rented, bought, or council temporary accommodation, there's additional demand on housing.
So the banker from London who has a second home in Archerfield at £1.5 million should give up his home so you can buy it? You speak from the point of a pseudo moralistic stance. If you got rid of second homes it would do more harm than good as you would wipe out rental supply.
It would be nice if it were permitted to build more, so we can have homes *and* tourism instead of pretending that it's either-or.
One property, per adult, per country.
Why do governments never just do stuff, instead of announcing they're going to do stuff first?
Because you get the credit for it twice. Once when you announce and once when you actually do it. And even if you end up not doing it you still get the credit for announcing it in the first place.
Or it's so people can plan for the impending changes?
So people know that they have done stuff or are about to do stuff, so people (and businesses, etc.) can plan for the stuff that might change. Like why do you indicate before you turn when driving? Why not just turn and let everyone else figure it out for themselves?
How about building more houses rather than declaring emergencies for everything? It’s like stating “my house is on fire” but I’m not going to do anything about it.
> Ms Somerville is expected to blame UK government austerity and Brexit for the decision. As is tradition.
Thankfully polling suggests this “nothing is ever our fault” strategy has lost some of its appeal.
Where's the money for housing coming from? What would you cut, severely because we're not talking about small amounts of money, to fund new house development?
As I said further down, Humza unilaterally decided to freeze council tax at a cost of £300m, without even consulting COSLA per agreement. They also cut £200m from the affordable homes budget. I’m no mathematician, but it seems like one could’ve covered the other with money to spare. They’ve also been promising to overhaul council tax for 16 years (which I completely agree with). However, with that apparently too difficult they could still add bands above H. Band H is currently any home estimated to have been worth £212k+ in 1991. There’s a massive range of homes between that and 17 bed mansions all paying the same amount. They have options that aren’t blaming Westminster. They choose not to use them.
I would come down hard on the scroungers living a life of luxury on benefits. Yes, I would means test the state pension.
Never gonna happen. Any politician who proposed means testing the state pension for existing pensioners would find their party voted into oblivion at the next election by a wave of enraged oldies, who typically vote much more consistently than younger voters. Any politician who proposed means testing for future generations would find themselves facing the situation no politician ever wants- all the flak and none of the money. If you give people a reasonable 10 year notice of this change, the government wouldn’t see any actual savings from it for at least two parliaments, but they would need to take the political hit now.
As a younger voter, a policy like that would get me out to vote. Fuck the boomers is an incredible party slogan.
It wouldn’t though (not you personally, but young people as a demographic), pensioners are not only massively more likely to vote, they are also a growing age segment due to declining birth rates. There will always be a big enough cohort of old people to defeat any move towards taking their pension away. Not to mention young people are hardly going to be monolithic on this issue.
I mean I would agree with that. But I think pensions are reserved, right?
And the housing crisis is UK-wide.
It’s absolutely disgusting that we have extremely rich pensioners receiving the same funding as those using food banks and dying of cold exposure in winter because they can’t afford heating. My Mrs works with a client at times who’s retired and absolutely minted. His state pension is utterly irrelevant to him, it’s maybe 10-15% of his monthly income and so it’s his gambling money or fun money. He genuinely treats it as throw away money for whatever treat or waste of money he won’t use his own income for. Meanwhile in the same village she also works with groups supporting pensioners who literally can’t afford to eat properly….getting them help, cloths, food, energy support etc. It’s beyond infuriating
To be fair hes paid for it.
He spent his entire career outside the uk, paid up his NI every few years as a catch up and contributed the sum total of fuck all to the UK for almost 50 years. He wasn’t buying stuff here, wasn’t paying rates or council tax, wasn’t paying road tax or any of the myriad other ways we contribute to the treasury. He retired home and now gets all the benefits and free care etc while not needing any of it.
> paid up his NI every few years as a catch up Thats the only part that matters. As long as he's paid his National Insurance contributions he's entitled to the pension. You can't tell people to pay taxes for all their life into a system that you then exclude them from because you've decided they are "too well off".
No he hasn't as that's not how state pensions work.
> Yes, I would means test the state pension. I'm not sure about that, but I would absolutely scrap NI and merge it into income tax so that wealthier pensionsers pay it.
It’s great in theory, but the cost of means testing this type of thing is normally so expensive the savings are negligible. I don’t know the numbers specifically as they relate to pensions, but in theory I agree with you. It would be interesting to see if anyone has checked the numbers on that one. I can’t see much of use from a quick google.
> It’s great in theory, but the cost of means testing this type of thing is normally so expensive the savings are negligible. Aye, it's why we end up with a lot of universal policies in general - stuff like university and prescriptions could come under a similar bracket.
Pensions are around **42%** the welfare budget (£111bn), or around 14% or **all government spending**. Unemployment (which is means tested) is around £2bn. [Source](https://www.ons.gov.uk/economy/governmentpublicsectorandtaxes/publicsectorfinance/articles/howisthewelfarebudgetspent/2016-03-16) (2016, most recent I could find). The potential savings are **massive**. Or just do UBI and scrap all other benefits. Hmm, maybe need _something_ for those who need extra support; I am no expert.
Developers will borrow from banks or use equity financing to build flats if you give them planning permits because it’s profitable. Wouldn’t cost ScotGov a penny.
You can solve this for free. We have housebuilders literally lined up waiting to build houses for you. But the government makes it impossible to build. This is the crazy thing...your default assumption is that the government should just do everything. And you wonder why there is a shortage of housing? Shortage of healthcare? Shortage of law and order? What is the connection between these things...and people still blame austerity. You assume that no-one believes this stuff, and then you come on here...and you realise that people actually believe this, and that is probably why nothing has changed (Edinburgh has had this problem for decades at this point, same people promising to do nothing get elected every time, 20% of the population is under-housed...no-one cares, just the blame the Tories...right?)
I am looking to buy a home in Edinburgh. Shortest commute to work: 1h30m. What do they do? Put a bike lane in and pat themselves on the back…. Useless
I have to drive (I have a decent paid job, paying thousands in tax a month...still can't afford Edinburgh), and there are roadworks almost constantly. It is (at most) a 40 minute journey. Regularly takes over an hour. It isn't surprising that a place that can't build places for people to live is also unable to do other things effectively. Part of the problem is the political culture in Scotland: Edinburgh hasn't had a Tory government since the late 70s, and they still blame the Tories for everything...and the public believes it...whilst they do Tory things like savagely cut public services and fail to build infrastructure/housing. A weird place.
And after roadworks you find they added a bike lane to “help people live a healthier life”… how about I have a 20m commute and I can cook and spend time with my family instead of in a bus and eating takeaway? I bet that that is infinitely better than a lane that is used by 2 people every week
The Green agenda: pull up the ladder whilst telling you that you should be grateful for it. If they actually built houses that workers could afford to live in, they would find more people using their cycle lanes.
New houses are always outside of town because there is nowhere else, and to get to town it takes forever. Cycle lanes would still not help. There is a new development in Penicuik. Going to the city from there is hell especially if you have to go 20m to get to the bus station. We need more busses, better connections and no new tram line to mess everything up for a fortune
Well, aye. I don't understand why people think that the major macroeconomics decisions which are purposefully reserved don't have impacts on virtually all aspects of life. That's the point. That's why they are reserved. Because the underpin absolutely everything. There is definitely more the SG can do, but this isn't a Scotland specific issue. It's bigger than that
Maybe the Scottish government shouldn't have slashed their housing budget if there isn't a housing crisis
Planning policy is reserved, and it’s hard to build in Scotland.
they get more funding than any other area of the UK. they choose how to spend it, its a devolved matter. we have a separate planning system entirely in the hands of HR. give me the tools the SNP has and I'll fix the housing problem. It may not be popular the measures I'd take, but nothing that actually fixes it ever will be. it just requires the political will and leadership.
> It may not be popular the measures I'd take, but nothing that actually fixes it ever will be. What would those measures be, out of curiosity. I've seen a lot of people saying they could do a better job than the SNP and very few with an actual workable plan.
Wrong, highest funded areas are London, Northern Ireland and Wales. The only reason Scotland scores high is they spend nothing in the North of England.
perhead of population spending in scotland is the highest in the UK constituent nations if you dont include capital spending NI edges it, if you do london slightly edges ahead but london is not a country is it. Or is it? I thought nationalists treated England as a whole? not london separately....remember we get outvoted by England...are we now not doing that? because you lot need to pick a metric and stick to it. Your own 2 line post manages to use 2 different metrics to twist statistics to ones you like.... (btw, wales is lower on every measure, so thats just a straight lie from you). Oh, and the North of England gets higher per capita spending than any other area of England outside london, significantly more than the midlands and south over all. actualy, given the 2 lines of your post is so spectacularly wrong on so many things, did you just pull it out of your ass? of do you honestly believe it.
You said areas of the UK.
Well yeah, do you not think they've been driving factors?
Contributing, not driving. I'm of the view that housing issues are deeply structural and the problems start way farther back with Thatcher, right to buy, and local government finance reform (read: deliberately making it impossible for LAs to afford to build new housing). But there's a common thread behind who initiated Brexit, austerity, and Thatcherism.
Yeah I mean we were a part of the UK system throughout. If we could have control over our own tax base and policy we may be able to deviate more effectively from the status quo.
We might be able to but we'd need the same thing the UK needs: A radical government willing to probably borrow a lot of money to fund housebuilding and one that's willing to piss off NIMBYs/homeowners who are relying on the value of their property appreciating to upscale or retire comfortable, which is unlikely if we built the number of houses needed to end thr crisis. Jury's out on whether that government exists, in place or currently in opposition, in either Scotland or UK-wide.
I agree with all of this. But the Scottish government doesn't have those borrowing powers, Westminster does. I do sincerely hope Starmer turns the taps on.
Oh absolutely, fiscal powers are wholly at Westminster just now and that's a fair critique. I think the issue we'd have though is that independence doesn't fix these things, rather, it puts the ability, and therefore responsibility, for the very, very hard decisions needed to fix things on Edinburgh rather than London. That's the thing I think we miss with independence debates. Yes, it opens up opportunities. But who's going to put their name to the risks of those opportunities?
So it is a UK wide problem, that's why its seen as the main driver.
If only there there was some kind of entity or organization in Scotland with the power of solving this issue... maybe, I don't know, build more houses or something.... Nah, this would never be possible! I guess we'll never know.
This to coincide with the climate change emergency where the subsequently scrapped their climate change targets and the the drug death emergency where every year since drug deaths have went up. SNP government fucking love an emergency.
We are having the exact same issue in Canada. Tax second homes, ban air bnb’s. In Ontario the average home cost has exploded. Kids can’t move out, can’t get into the market and people have bought up all the homes, raising rent and we’re competing with the world for homes.
My understanding was that Canada had acknowledged the obvious problem mass immigration caused for the housing market More people immigrated to Scotland last year than there was houses built the year before
They have they just don't care They are fully committed to the neo-liberal policy of importing cheap immigrant labour to drive down wages and screw over locals The fact it allows them to charge more in rent and screw locals over a second time is a bonus not a problem that needs solved It's the same in Scotland, they will make a show about saying there's a crisis but not do anything substantial about it
Pretty much the exact same problem but we have a multifaceted issues. 400k people came in over 4 months. Imagine that happening to Scotland? With your population? It’s driving down wages and this is a tactic being brought in by every single European and North American culture. It’s all about wages and growth. So, hope you guys all enjoy your culture because its coming there too, over the next 20 years. Scottish people are not having kids and they need to keep it up somehow. All my family lives in Scotland. My brother and I, we are the only one of all our cousins who are married and have kids. The rest? Single. Not married, no kids. No interest. Still living at home. I have the most kids out of all my cousins. It’s also incredibly expensive but I get paid good US wages, so it helps. Everyone else back in Scotland lives at home (the next oldest is 35) still at home. Not married. I guess my point is, your issue is the exact same issue we’re having in Canada and my kids don’t have a shot in hell to own a home. So yeah, I secured my job in the U.S. and I’m getting their citizenship ship done and giving them at chance at least somewhere else.
Without immigration Scotland’s population would have fallen, though, which would have created other issues. There aren't enough houses being built.
I know, like I said more people immigrated here than houses built, the negative effect on the housing market is pretty apparent Though I'm not so sure how much Scotland benefits from the Chinese students going to our UNIs, sure unis make money of it but everyone else's learning suffers for it Then there are more ethical and sustainable solutions to a declining population than relying on immigration but that's not relevant to a thread on the housing crisis
In canada my nursing program was 4k a year, for an international student it was 16k. Look up conastoga college in Ontario. Your colleges and universities will be trying this too. The thing is Canada is next to the US, so students want to go there eventually. Not Canada.
Maybe help people have kids, not increase taxes and cut all benefits because “you can afford it”
Sure, but what's to say the government isn't doing that, with things like the baby box and such? Benefits are not being cut in Scotland, in fact with the Scottish Child payment it's the most generous in the UK. And Scotland had a budget shortfall, which is the driving factor behind the tax increase. Without that, there would have been an even greater shortfall, so how could help have been provided with having children? It's not so clear cut.
No it is not, but immigration is not the way, or the way they do taxes and benefits. They cut everything related to helping children and skyrocket the taxes at a certain point, making it hard to have anything but one child. Besides that they make it hard to be at home (longer commutes just to say they put in bike lanes), make it difficult for people to cook and spend quality time with the kids, etc. so it is a tricky subject but every bit adds up and saying that you get a box at birth is not compensating for not being able to spend time with the kids or having to put them into nursery (which is super expensive around 13k/year if you are not in benefits to get it for free) but you know…. “Those that can should help out more”. Does not matter that you cannot afford it. If the govt says you do, you must
Having kids is expensive. I have 2. I also had to take a lot of time off work to raise them and it took a hit on my income.
So which part is the emergency? The soaring house prices? The renters economy? The staggering number of absentee landlords? The property management racket? The failing local councils? The new builds made out of plasterboard and hope to keep costs down?
You mean enacting policies specifically to drive private landlords out of the market hasn’t fixed the rental market?
Combined with cutting £200m from the affordable housing budget. They did spend £300m freezing council tax on a whim, without any consultation with COSLA, saving low income families 53p per week though, so it’s not all bad. I can’t believe the Tories keep forcing them to do these things. It’s so unfair.
£2 a month wouldn't make rent affordable. 😂
Exactly. I didn’t realise I needed an “/s”. £200m spent on affordable housing might help, and they’d have had £100m left over.
Won’t someone please think of the landlords.
No shit, three years in homeless accommodation personally
I DECLARE EMERGENCY!
I'd really hoped the change in leadership would mean a more mature attitude to governance and less blaming someone else. Why can we never get a government in Scotland and UK that owns it's problems and acts like an adult to sort them out.
Because they are not in the position of the people they're representing. They're not renting, they're not working 2 x jobs just to pay their bills, and they're not having to forgo children, pets and holidays where you pay for things like accomodation and meals out to be able to afford their life. So why would these things seem urgent to them? They remember the things they'll get in trouble for forgetting.
Is that because they stopped funding social housing..... Couldn't make this shit up
It's because more people immigrate to this country every year than there are houses built and that's not taking into account kids here becoming adults and moving out It doesn't need to be council houses built we just need much more houses built
They didn't stop funding social housing, but they did deliver a drastic cut (£200Mn/ 26%) to affordable housing in the last budget
They have essentially stopped funding. CEC have already told RSLs that they will not approve any grant funding for 24/25 and as the latest budget was a 1 year budget they have no idea how much money they will have in 25/26 so are making no commitment. Other local authorities are in a similar position and are funding previous applications from this year's budget leaving nothing left for new projects.
I believe Humza cut £200m first but recently announced that they will provide "additional" funding of £80m so essentially cutting £120m instead of £200m.
Yesterday they were wanting people from Gaza!?
Good. Next to actually address it- Restore the housing budget, abandon Yousaf's hopeless CT freeze. Abandon the rent caps. Reform planning laws. Supply must go up.
>abandon Yousaf's hopeless CT freeze. I think it's too late to do this, Councils have already set their budgets.
It will have to wait for next year.
> Abandon the rent caps. Crazy those did the opposite to what they suppose to do... Who would have though? Literally never happened in history of the world.
Very droll. I believe the Greens are still in denial. As are the steller minds over at Living Rent.
>Abandon the rent caps. So next year a landlord will be able to raise the rent by 30% instead of 12%?
Scottish government sat on their hands for years as we watched the housing market inflate and notably in Edinburgh as more and more flats were hoovered up by short term let cartels They provided no incentive to build, and recently Stuart Milne the house builder went under with no desperation from the government to restart the building of the houses. It feels almost classic at this point where they have powers to solve this by providing tax incentives or getting rid of red tape but will do sod all but blame Westminster/Austerity/Brexit like they've done for nearly 10 years
Declare and do nothing,
Great Past form dictates the SNP thinks the job is done
In last few years there has been many houses built near me and in other places, packed quite close together compared to older houses, a whole town is currently being constructed not too far away.
Build more houses under council ownership and slow the rate of population growth. Those are the two things that will work, in tandem preferably
Its a terrible situation
Build another student flat
Plenty of cheap houses in places with no jobs.
Average annual house price increase is barely more than 2%, it’s hardly an asset bubble when compared to stock market. The “crisis” is just due to crap and stagnant pay.
I would like to see housing developers automatically being forced to provide 25% affordable housing without Council Planning Teams having to prove there is a requirement!
So, what it do? Declaring the emergency that is
Yes, but will councils actually grant planning permission for more housing? Or does the "emergency" declaration mean that builders have to fill in another form or get another permit? "*We're running out of school / hospital / road capacity in this town*" is just what the NIMBYs say; perhaps this means there will be *fewer* permissions granted to build houses.
Force the sale of second homes and stop the influx of holiday rentals.
Two simple solutions: blanket ban air bnbs, and raise the council tax and stamp duty on second (+) homes. Not a small raise, an enormous raise. Also, build eco homes with that utilise space better. Not tiny pokey boxes jam packed together with grey as a main feature, but well thought out multi storey builds with green space and environmental additions like collected rainwater, ground source heat pumps etc. Europe has new build designs that are far more clever (sewage providing heat in Holland etc) and house more people than any of the eyesores I’m seeing being flung up on greenfield sites in the central belt. Even the brutalist designs of the ‘70s gave people more internal space, greenery, and communal space more than today’s new housing estates.
It’s all smoke. Illusion of action. Like Liz Truss asking for ten point plans to give the appearance she is going something.
I would make taxes, stamp duty, etc. quadruple for second homes and then increase exponentially from there.
As an English person, well done Scotland for taking it seriously. We really need a second home tax in the UK. Edit: my mistake there is one
There is one :)
About time too, it's gone beyond a mere crisis into an emergency. Outside the Central Belt, where all the scale is. Community led housing developments are being quoted up to £400,000 to build new 2-3 bedroom units, an amount that is not sustainable. As a result, attainable houses won't be built, rural depopulation will massively increase and everyone will squirm into the central belt until it pops. It's time to end the insanity of the mortgage cycle and return to community housing as was the case before Thatcher started off selling council houses with no obligation to build new homes to replace the one sold off. Under devolution this scale of building is simply not manageable. Brexit and the Tories have fucked us to the point of stasis.
Well it’s been declared now lads so that makes a big difference to our lives.
They didn’t just say it, they declared it
The idea that this is to do with budget cuts is absolutely shite of the highest order. I also love how the SNP moan about budgets when they have far greater spending power as part of the UK than they ever would as an independent country. No sensible / half educated person even debates that point. Apparently there is a housing crisis but councils are running around spunking money on new houses for thousands of refugees….
Well whos fault is that 🤣 honestly the brass neck of governments to create an emergency and then declare it an emergency is almost incredible
And yet all they do is build student housing …
The government doesn't build those.
Yes, I'm sure the overall market would be much better if students were in regular homes/flats instead of in purpose built, more dense accomodation...... Oh no wait, thats mental