"We need quick answers - or we risk social inequality on a scale not seen in modern times"

Only radical action will solve the generation-defining challenge of city's housing emergency, says ex-Kirk minister and politician Ewan Aitken

Ewan Aitken: Pic by Cyrenians

Perhaps it’s not surprising that Ewan Aitken is not his usual enthusiastic self. “It’s keeping me awake at nights, frankly. I’m really worried about what is happening in Edinburgh.”

A respected and energetic “man o’ mony pairts” in the life of Scotland’s Capital, the issue keeping Ewan from a good night’s sleep is one he – and many others – see as fundamental to our future as a city that cares for all of our citizens, and a challenge we show every sign of being unable to meet.

Homelessness. The housing emergency. The growing inability of our city to provide safe, secure and warm accommodation for its people. As chief executive of Edinburgh Cyrenians, one of the leading charities dealing with the impact of homelessness, it is an issue he has thought deeply about for many years.

As a Church of Scotland Minister in the early 1990s, he was so moved by what he saw visiting parishioners in their homes he decided to get into local politics. He became a councillor in 1999, then council leader in 2006, before returning to the Church, before joining Cyrenians around a decade ago.

It’s a problem he’s viewed from several angles, and watched continue to deepen.

The answer he feels comes down to land - and more precisely tackling the landbanks held largely by private developers - to make sure it is available for house building at a time when it is so desperately needed. And, of course, the not-so-small matter of the money to build the affordable homes needed.

Counting the cost

Statistics rarely tell the whole story, but there are some stark figures that should give us all pause for thought. Edinburgh’s housing emergency factors include:

·         The highest private rents in Scotland and among the highest in the UK

·         The lowest rate of council owned housing in Scotland

·         Social home provision at just over half the national average (14% to 23%)

·         Approximately 200 bids for every available social housing property

·         The fastest rising private rents in the UK at 13.7%

·         A chronic shortage of family, and accessible, social housing

Here’s one further statistic, which sadly illustrates the extraordinary cost to ordinary people who find themselves homeless: they live, on average, 30-40 years less than the general population. In Scotland, in 2024, men die at 47 and women at 43, as opposed to 77 and 81. On any scale, that is a tragedy.

The legacy of right to buy

How did it come to this? The answer is that it has been an inevitable slow march for more than 40 years, when a decision was taken that changed not only the face of housing in Britain, but public attitudes to it. When houses stopped being homes and started being commodities. The Right to Buy which was introduced by Mrs Thatcher’s government in 1980 and survived – in one form or another- subsequent governments. It was only ended in Scotland in 2014 when it was abolished by the Scottish Government.

Ewan said: “There is no doubt Right to Buy was the main root cause, the big change that started what subsequently became an almost inevitable chain of unintended consequences. Mrs Thatcher had an ideological dislike of The State, and wanted, as she saw it, to free people from Big Government. She wanted to turn a nation of people dependent on their state homes into a nation of homeowners.”

And, to some extent, she did. Homeownership shot up from around 36% to 66% - but almost half a million council and social homes in Scotland were lost in the process, and very few were replaced. The legislation required monies generated by the discounted property sales should be used to pay down local authority debts. 

“The net result was homes vanished in their thousands from the control of councils, and the local authorities were not really able to replace by building new homes. Yet it remains a fact that some of the most successful capitalist economies in the world, Germany and Singapore are two examples, retain strong public sector housing provision. In Singapore, 80% of housing is provided by the State. Happy, safe, available workers appears to equal strong productivity.

“Even more unfortunately, over the longer term many of the homes that were sold off have found their way into the hands of private rental landlords. I’m not having a go at them, because the private rental sector is hugely important in Edinburgh’s housing mix now, but it means that these homes are still being rented out rather than owner-occupied, and generally the rents are higher.”

Homeless charities have been pointing to enormous problem posed by Right to Buy for a long, long time. In 2006, Shelter Scotland wrote: “The transfer of such a large stock of dwellings from public to private use has inevitably had major implications for the availability of housing in the public sector in Scotland.”

While Right to Buy may have set this ball rolling, decisions taken since then appear largely to have compounded the problem. The regular failure to meet modest new homes targets; planning issues and delays going back years; and more recently well-intended actions such as increased planning gain (making developers pay towards physical and social infrastructure), affordable housing quotas, rent caps and rent controls have acted only to disincentivise developers from building new properties.

Opening up the landbanks

The availability of sites is a major factor, in Ewan’s opinion, and he is a strong advocate of the need for reforming land ownership to take more development land into state control. “The council’s City Plan 2030 maintains there are sufficient brownfield sites to fill the need. I have to say that is hard to agree with, particularly as sites they do identify are not even available for housing at this point in time and would only become available by displacing hundreds of businesses without any plan to relocate them.

“We do need to be more open in identifying sites for housing, and we need to look at land ownership. In my view, we should be looking to tap into the landbanks that are privately held and, where required, taking ownership through compulsory purchase. The state needs to be able to supply land for developers to build on. They need to be profitable, of course, but land has to be available and in Finland, for example, 90% of the land is owned by the State.”

Vienna’s social housing provides inspiration: pic by City of Vienna

Vienna provides another example. After more than 100 years of developing social and public housing, much of which is award-winning, Austria’s capital sees 60% of the population live happily in accommodation provided by the city, or by not-for-profit co-operatives that the city helps to support.

There must be an answer to Edinburgh’s conundrum. “For sure we need to find answers, and quickly, or we risk a city that has social inequality on a scale we’ve not witnessed in modern times, with all of the problems that will bring. At this moment in time, I can’t say I’m confident.”

No plans for more than 100 homes

Housebuilders want to build in and around the Capital, as do housing associations. Politicians do not want to see people homeless. It’s also bad for businesses and the economy – workers living in decent accommodation with reasonable access to work is a prerequisite of a productive economy. Surely we can make this work?

Ewan has lived experience that there is no easy solution to a problem that is deep-rooted and complex in its causes. But there are one or two things of which he is certain – where the problem began, and the urgency and scale of action needed if we are to tackle it.

In Edinburgh alone, the city needs a supply of developable sites; we need streamlined planning; we need an incentivised and willing homebuilding sector – both private and social; and we need money. Lots of it – at least an additional £500million is needed in the capital just to get our existing targets for new homes back on track.

Cllr Jane Meagher, Housing Convener

And we need to mobilise on a national level. As Chair of SHAPE (Strategic Homelessness Action Partnership in Edinburgh), which is made up of homeless charities in the city, he wrote to Scotland’s Housing Minister Paul McLennan appealing for support to tackle the city’s housing emergency – the letter co-signed by the council’s housing convener Jane Meagher and Edinburgh Chamber of Commerce Chief Executive Liz McAreavey.

Ewan said: “If we are to have any chance we need the three sectors – public, private and third – to stop bumping into one another and start working together to find solutions, and soon. Last year, no application was lodged for a development of more than 100 homes. It is frightening.”

Money remains one of the biggest stumbling blocks to tackling our housing crisis. An additional £500 million is needed to hit targets for new homes, money the council simply doesn’t have. Appeals to the Scottish Government have, in effect, been met with tea and sympathy, but Holyrood points to its own empty pockets. The Housing Minister has been chatting up institutional investors, hoping to attract private finance into funding residential property in Scotland’s Capital as a worthwhile investment. Yet the introduction of measures like rent-freezes and rent caps allied to difficulty in dealing with the planning process hardly helps his case.

The case for US-style housing bonds

Is a new approach required. The Inquirer asks if utilising the Bond market is worth considering? After all, the city has enormous financial expertise and might an Edinburgh Homes Bond be something that all concerned could rally behind – allowing concerned private citizens to invest in their own city’s future alongside institutional investors?

Ewan muses the possibility. “It’s definitely worth considering. It could allow people, institutions and philanthropists to be part of a solution to something that does affect us all, one way or another. This is a fundamental problem for the city, and indeed for Scotland. I hesitate to use war as an analogy, when there are real wars being fought in the world right now, but we do need a national reaction to pull together to overcome a problem that is on such a scale that it naturally demands solutions are found on a big scale. We need to pull together as countries do in time of war.”