Dear Chancellor, be a darling, and wipe out Scotland’s housing debt!

We the undersigned call on the Chancellor Alistair Darling to write off Scotland’s housing debt, without housing stock transfers.

Scottish tenants want Chancellor to write off debt

[Herald Article] The Scottish Tenants’ Organisation is demanding a meeting with the Chancellor, Alistair Darling to discuss writing-off local authorities’ £2.2bn historic housing debt.

The organisation cites a report from Audit Scotland which showed that this would be neutral in terms of the public purse. Debt write-off was previously dependent on council tenants agreeing to vote for transfer to new landlords.

But one of the cities to suffer most from not going down the stock transfer route is Edinburgh and with Mr Darling an MP for the city the STO hopes to impress on him their case.

John Carracher, convener of the organisation said: “Writing off this debt would release huge amounts of money to allow councils to invest in stock thereby solving virtually all our council housing investment problems in one act.”

He said “stock transfers amount to coercion which is being pursued for purely ideological reasons and that a change of direction needs to take place.

“We believe there are no good financial reasons for denying debt write-off and a change of direction could take place now with no need for legislation, so what are we waiting for?”

The STO cites the report by Audit Scotland which said: “This form of debt repayment is not in itself a cost to government in cash terms. The original borrowing – and the investment it funded – was a cost to government. But subsequent debt interest and repayments are transactions entirely within the public sector, so there is no net effect.”

Mr Carracher said: “Improvements to people’s homes and a change of landlord are two quite separate issues and should be treated as such. Housing stock transfers are an illogical approach to public housing provision and the approach must change.”

He said that at a recent meeting with the Scottish housing minister the STO argument had been accepted and he hoped Holyrood would back them in their fight with the Treasury.

Answer Time

A programme looking at some of the answers behind housing questions.

Firm Foundations? A response to the Scottish Government’s Housing Green Paper

An Academic response to ‘Firm Foundations’  Government consultation paper on housing.

We want to begin by welcoming some bold and positive changes – most notably the recognition of the important role played by social housing 1 , and the ending of the right to buy for new social rented homes. We also acknowledge the difficulties of making radical change in the current political climate – as exemplified by the negative grilling that characterised the Newsnight Scotland interview following the announcement of the end of the right-to-buy, and the scramble by Labour and the Conservatives to claim credit for promoting regressive inheritance taxes. Perhaps partly as a result of this, the Green Paper seems overwhelmingly anxious not to alienate existing property interests and thus often to be trying to reconcile the irreconcilable.

An Alternative Housing Strategy for Scotland

A series of papers from a recent academic conference analysing the state of housing in Scotland, and looking at ideas for the future of housing in the nation, is now online.

 

[For full details see: http://www.geos.ed.ac.uk/research/humangeography/housing.html]

 

Symposium Notice

 

Abstracts

 

PAPERS:

 

• Stuart Cameron – Going for Growth and its legacy: room for the community?

• Rachel England – Background data

• Andrew Field – View from the Scottish Federation of Housing Associations (For related material see www.sfha.co.uk )

• Sarah Glynn – An Alternative Housing Strategy for Scotland (For related material see Soft Selling Gentrification? and But we already have community ownership: making council housing work, and visit http://www.geos.ed.ac.uk/homes/sglynn)

• Andrew MacLaran and Sinead Kelly – The Residential Transformation of Inner Dublin

• David Manley-Mixed Tenure (For related material visit: http://www.st-andrews.ac.uk/chr )

• Hilary Thomson _ Healthy housing investment in Scotland

Upcoming Housing Conference

A day’s symposium

Sponsored by The School of Geosciences, University of Edinburgh 1st October 2007 with:-

• Peter Ambrose ‐ University of Brighton
• John Bone ‐ University of Aberdeen
• Stuart Cameron ‐ University of Newcastle
• Andrew Field ‐ SFHA
• William Fleming ‐ Scottish Government
• Sarah Glynn ‐ University of Edinburgh
• Andrew MacLaran ‐ Trinity College Dublin
• David Manley ‐ University of St Andrews
• Hilary Thomson ‐ MRC Glasgow

To reserve a place: email Robert.Groves@ed.ac.uk

Conference Room, David Hume Tower
George Square, Edinburgh

AN ALTERNATIVE HOUSING STRATEGY FOR SCOTLAND
A day’s symposium sponsored by the School of Geosciences, University of Edinburgh
1st October 2007

Those who have been working on housing ­ or trying to find somewhere to live – have long known that we have a housing crisis; but now, suddenly, everyone is talking about it. And with a new Scottish government putting together a new housing green paper later this autumn, we need a serious debate on the issue, which is prepared to ask some fundamental questions. We will hear papers from academics who have been taking a
critical  look  at  the  nature  and  impacts  of  housing  policy  both  within and outwith Scotland, and from the Scottish  Executive  (Department  of  Communities  and  Sport);  and  the  day  will  end  with  a  round  table discussion that brings together academics, policy makers and housing activists.

Draft programme:
9.00 – 9.30 registration and coffee

9.30 – 10.45 Sarah Glynn, University of Edinburgh (An Alternative Housing Strategy for Scotland?), William Fleming,  Scottish  Government  (The  Future  of  Social  Housing:  the  new  governments’  perspective),  David Manley, University of St Andrews (Mixing Tenures – in search of Scottish evidence)

10.45 – 11.15 coffee

11.15 – 12.30 Andrew Field, SFHA (View from the SFHA), Peter Ambrose, University of Brighton (The Real Meaning of Affordability), John Bone, University of Aberdeen (On the Treadmill)

12.30 – 1.30 lunch

1.30 – 2.45 Hilary Thomson, MRC Glasgow (Healthy Housing Investment in Scotland), Andrew MacLaran, Trinity  College  Dublin  (The  Impact  of  Recent  Changes  in  the  Irish  Housing  System),  Stuart  Cameron, University of Newcastle (The Changing Face of Housing Market Renewal in England)

2.45 – 3.15 tea

3.15 – 5.00 round table discussion

There will be opportunity for further discussion with drinks afterwards, and it is also hoped that participants will want to join the speakers for a restaurant dinner. All main speakers will be asked to keep their presentation to a maximum of 15­20 minutes to allow time for questions  and  discussion.  The  final  round  table  discussion  will  give  an  opportunity  to  raise  issues  not previously covered, with everyone being given an opportunity to speak. Participants will be asked to book, and numbers will be kept to no more than 40 in the interests of debate. All speakers will be asked to submit a written version of their paper, which, along with a summary report of the discussion, will be put on the Institute of Geography Website as a more permanent record and resource for policy makers.
Thanks to the sponsors there will be no cost for this event

To reserve a place, email Robert.Groves@ed.ac.uk.  For further information email Sarah.Glynn@ed.ac.uk

Fighting Neoliberalism at Home: lessons from 100 years of housing campaigns

It might seem odd at first glance to begin a talk on neo-liberalism by going back into history, but as new neoliberalism is an incarnation of old free-market capitalism, past campaigns against some of the worst inherent injustices of that system can still have a lot to teach us. Of course history never repeats itself exactly. The pace of globalisation has added new dimensions and new pressures, and we now have new tools in the form of the electronic media, but the idea that past history is less relevant today is just spin concocted by the Brave New World of the likes of New Labour.

Decent housing is a basic need – and today recognised by the United Nations as a basic human right – but that does not make it easy to fight for. Because it is such a fundamental need, campaigners are put under a lot of pressure not to do anything that may jeopardise the immediate requirements of affected households. Nevertheless there is an impressive history of housing struggle and some notable successes. What I want to do is attempt to analyse some of those successes in the British context, drawing out the keys to and the limits of their achievements. And I will end by trying to apply the lessons learnt to some current campaigns in Britain and France.