| Martin Wilkie-McFarlane, service manager at Shelter Advice Services Dundee, told the Tele recent years had seen a huge depletion in the amount of affordable homes available in the rented sector and this was causing real hardship.
He was speaking just days after latest figures revealed that 2033 people on Dundee City Council’s housing waiting list were living in overcrowded conditions as of September this year.
Now Mr Wilkie-McFarlane has repeated Shelter’s demand that more affordable housing must be created in the city and across the rest of Scotland.
Although keen to avoid entering the political argument currently raging between councillors, he pointed out that the right-to-buy legislation resulted in the loss of 2436 units of the council’s housing stock between 1998 and 2007.
He said this, combined with rising house prices, has made it increasingly difficult to find homes for those who need them most.
“Our current mission is to ensure people in housing need are able to access and keep an affordable home in which they can thrive,” he said.
“In Dundee our most up-to-date figure showed 8500 people on the council’s waiting list.
“I know there is a debate at the moment about those figures, but what we do know is that there has been a huge loss of affordable housing due to the right-to-buy legislation.
“An increase in affordable rented housing in Dundee is vital to give people a safe, secure permanent home.”
The demand for social housing in the city became a source of major controversy this year when a Tele investigation in March revealed more than 10,000 people were on the council waiting list.
Last week it emerged that this figure has since dropped by a fifth — a fact welcomed by the council administration, who had been accused of presiding over a “housing crisis”.
But Dundee-based academic Dr Sarah Glynn has called for an immediate halt on the council’s demolition programme as a first step towards increasing available housing stock.
The council, backed by housing convener George Regan, is currently following a policy of demolishing housing considered unattractive to the public — primarily the city’s multis — and investing in new premises deemed to be more in demand.
But Mr Wilkie-McFarlane refused to be drawn on this issue.
He said, “That is a strategic decision that the local authority has taken and I would not want to comment on it.” |
