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Toi Staff
Gideon Levy
Jeffrey Bernstein Ph.d
Rachel Marsden
Tarik Cyril Amar
Omar Mohammed
Muhannad Ayyash
John McLellan: Tear up the council red tape - and let the builders build Well-meaning they may be, but the lesson from the Scottish Government’s emergency rent caps, only lifted a fortnight ago, is they are a disincentive to house builders and investment funds who simply take their business elsewhere. “Rent controls and cost increases have killed the market,” said one senior Edinburgh economic development figure.
It was the local government equivalent of the “I’m Spartacus” moment when Kirk Douglas was about to be nailed up at the end of the 1960 sword and sandals epic.
Admittedly, “I’m a housing emergency” doesn’t quite have the same ring to it, but 12 councils followed Argyll and Bute’s example in June 2023 by declaring a housing emergency, with Edinburgh second just over four months later, quickly followed by Glasgow at the end of November 2023. Not to be outdone, caught out by demands or, as the SNP voted against a similar motion from Scottish Labour the same month, embarrassed, the Scottish Government then followed suit in May 2024.
It’s not difficult to be cynical about such pronouncements, but it was somewhat rich of the Scottish Government to ring the alarm bell, having cut £200 million from the affordable housing programme budget in December 2023, and then present its reinstatement last December as a benefit. Campaigners were quick to point out the £768m affordable housing pot was just two per cent more than the £752 in 2023/24.
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