Campaigners from tenant’s union Living Rent, gathered outside the City Chambers today calling on the council to repair and rent out a large number of empty homes in Edinburgh.
Members from Living Rent’s Lochend branch said their protest comes after it was revealed there are 1,456 unused council homes in the capital in addition to long waiting lists for social housing.
Members from Living Rent’s Lochend branch said their protest comes after it was revealed there are 1,456 unused council homes in the capital in addition to long waiting lists for social housing.
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NewsTranscript
00:00 Empty houses! No excuses!
00:08 The only barrier between our lives and another attack.
00:15 If we had more workers repairing more homes, those 1500 homes could easily be sorted if it was the will, the political and managerial will, and the money, not just from this council, the money from the police down the road in Holyhood, the Scottish Government could provide the money.
00:37 So currently there's about 1500 empty council homes in Edinburgh, that equates to roughly 1 in 14 of the city's council housing stock lies empty.
00:50 At the same time we've got 23,000 people on a waiting list for social homes.
00:55 A lot of these empty houses have been empty since the 90s and what we were raising and what I was raising with the deputation was that this is a scandal of neglect, quite frankly, that we can have people waiting up to 15 years for a social home when we've got 1500 sitting there lying empty.
01:16 I have a neighbour who has three children, she's pregnant and they're shoved in a two bedroom flat on the top floor of our building.
01:29 They've been in there for over a year. So two bedrooms, five, six people living there. It's ridiculous and in the next building to us there's three empty homes.
01:41 The large majority has not been done because of repairs, so there are faults in the house and rather than spend money and get the repairs done so that these homes can be brought back into use, they're just being left to rot.
02:05 The council, they make the point that it's always a money issue with the council. The point that I raised in the deputation is we estimate that it would cost about £30 million to repair all of these homes and bring them back into use as social housing.
02:20 The council have just spent £37 million on George Street, one of the richest streets in Edinburgh, one of the most affluent streets in the city.
02:28 So it's not an issue of money, it's an issue of priorities and the council persistently would much rather spend money on things that are going to go towards tourism, things that are going to help businesses which benefit from tourism, rather than help the actual people of Edinburgh.
02:40 Places like Loch End are just being avoided, they're being neglected by the council.
02:45 What came out of today is we've got a meeting now arranged with Derek McGowan who is head of the Housing, Homelessness and Fair Work Committee, so this is very much his remit.
02:55 Councillors obviously, they have the political side but the person with actual decision making power over the voids team and over this issue is the council staff and Derek McGowan is the head honcho of this.
03:07 So we've got a meeting now set up with him, so it's been very successful.
03:11 The deputation was well received by a lot of the councillors. Overall I think it was successful because we got a primary ask which was a meeting with Derek McGowan who can actually get the wheels in motion and get this work started to get done.
03:24 done.