A Way Forward for Housing?
Posted: Thursday, 20 January 2005 |
Comments
I can't believe you even haveto ask the question! I think it's a bloody great idea and somthing that has come about 25 years too late. I'm afraid it is one of the issues that gets me really wound up. I think local goverment have disgracefully let local people down for far too long. I would even go as far to say that it maybe too little too late. We have already lost too many communities....what began with the invasion of North Wales back in the 70's has spread like a cancer to Scotland, Devon and Cornwall. When you break up communities then you break up community spirit and help the degeneration of respect that this image/money obsessed society has collapsed into.
Local homes for local people. I'm not saying that you haveto have been born somwhere or lived there for donkeys years to be a local (I'm a Mull incommer myself,though my partner is an Islander), what I'm saying is that if you want to buy a property somwhere, then you should do so because you want to live in the area and contribute to the local economy and community....not to mention get envolved in the local way of life.
I think second homes that are left empty most of the year or sold on for huge profits that locals can't afford are a complete scandle.
My one concearn about the above proposals is the term 'new build'. In my experience, 'new build' homes are just glorified rabbit hutches squeased together with little room to breath away from your neighbours. I would rather carry on renting our semi-rural flat than buy a box on a modern estate. (well, there's no pleasing some is there! lol ;-p)
witchinthewoods from Mull
A bit Catch 22-ish, if you have to live somewhere for three years in order to get a house there. If I was an employer I wouldn't be too happy either. Imagine needing to employ a train driver because a railway has re-opened, and making him/her commute 50 miles.
I don't have much sympathy with national parks either. Their reluctance to grant planning permission and the architectural conditions they impose if it is pushed through are one reason why houses in those areas are so expensive.
To let more people live where they want planning needs to be made much easier so the price of a plot reflects land value, not building value. We also have to accept that not everybody can afford to own a house, the same as 50, 100 or 200 years ago.
And then tax the empty houses to the hilt.
Nic from Coll
Whilst the suggestion to ban non-locals from buying local houses may on first sight seem a solution to a very worrying problem I’m not sure it’s the answer. Where will it stop? Already in Caernarfon and the Lleyn peninsular local councillors want to ban the selling of ‘local’ houses to non-welsh speakers, even though 80% of the population of Wales don’t speak welsh. Other minority groups will jump on the band wagon and little Hitler’s, all with their own agendas, will crawl out of the woodwork, and argue the precedent has been set.
What if you live in one of these ‘local only’ homes, work in that area dries up and you wish to sell – sell to whom? Or would the classification of ‘local’ then be conveniently removed?
Just as smoking is become socially unacceptable, the owning of holiday and second homes should become socially unacceptable. Unfortunately the TV has gone overboard with endless nauseous mid afternoon tripe encouraging the well off to buy up the countryside in quite an offensive manner. These programmes are truly appalling and never consider the anti-social consequences of their cheap viewing.
If this rule applied to Coll many people I know who are dynamic members of the community could not have been able to move here. At the same time many of the long term collachs who have moved away hang onto their roots by keeping their old family homes, using them now for holidays or holidays for their descendants. It is odd that these people who were once the backbone of the community are now the ones hindering the development of Coll.
Regulation should be a very last resort. I would, probably naively, like to think that social education could be the answer although in reality it has as much chance as us reducing of carbon emissions before all is doomed.
Tony from Coll
With friends who live in the Yorkshire Dales, I can understand the proposal; their two children had to move away. I'm also aware that many of the people who have second homes in the area just come there for weekends, loaded with supermarket supplies bought in their home towns. (In fairness, some joined in and bought locally, but relatively few.) Nic's correct too, as there are some huge restrictions on renovations,etc, on buildings. Took my friends seven years to get a dropped kerb to get to their parking space! Renting is also a problem, they tell me. There is also the issue of local landowners who sell off buildings for holiday homes or who convert derelict buildings to holiday cottages and they want their money back and more, understandably. Still, I'm with witchinthewoods!
Sunset from Mull
Tony - the answer is to find some mechanis for affordable housing, but clearly there are questions of local culture as well. On visiting Coll late last year I was overwhelmed by the lack of any identifiably Scottish voices. Out of interest, what % of people on Coll are, in any sense local would you say?
Angus from Oban
Angus
Approximately 96.4% of the population this very day are local. I reckon there are three visitors to the island at the moment but I may, of course, have that wrong - as I may be wrong on the count of locals actually home and now away.
The difficulty I have with any kind of regulation, as suggested for the Yorkshire dales, is that it can be construed as discrimination, no matter how worthy one perceives the cause. I find discrimination hard to justify.
Tony from Coll
Hi Angus
Depends on how you identify a local. There is a four-year-old at the school who can trace her maiden line as far back on Coll as is possible (she has sisters too), but does that make her more local than her class-mates who copy their parents and have a more 'English' accent? By the time they've been at Oban High School for a term they all talk broad Oban anyway.
I'm an English incomer, although my maiden name was Mckinnon, a good Coll name. However my Dad was born in Switzerland, his Mum in the USA and further back I don't know.
Coll suffered heavily in the clearances, the population dropped from 1500 ish to its current level of about 160. In terms of traditional Scottish culture we have very little, except we still do first footing (very enthusiastically).
It is only recently the population on islands generally has stopped declining. I would hate to discourage Coll kids from going to college and wanting careers which are incompatible with living here, but it would be great if one returned as a qualified plumber!
In the bar I tell visitors Coll is one third Collachs, one third incomer Scots and one third English, but anyone arriving here and going to the school is a Collach, where ever they were born.
Nic from Coll
Dear Tony/Nic, maybe I didn't experience a cross-section of the community but it seemed overwhelmingly English.
On Burn's Day I'd say nothing other than welcome to all-comers to Scotland, but I wonder do visitors/new Collachs themselves not feel disappointed if little is left of local culture in the way of people?
What I mean is if I re-located to another part of the world I would be disappointed to find a third or more of the people to be from Oban!
I feel that the housing proposal is a good one and needed to help highland communities and the local economy thrive again.
Angus from Oban
From our time on Mull I can say that a better approach for people (local or incomers wanting to settle) searching for suitable housing would be to legislate against owners of second homes that are occupied in for just a tiny fraction of the year.
So many houses on Mull sit empty for most of the year despite there being a chronic housing shortage. MICT did a study a while ago and the number of families living full-time in caravans on the island is a disgrace.
What would better serve these communities would be developments of 'only-to-rent' housing, owned by community housing trusts and with a clause in their constitution that no property can be sold. This would serve to keep these houses affordable and, by ensuring a range of property sizes, provide a natural progression as families increase in size.
Unfortunately at the back of all this lurks profit. Few developers are going to commit to a long-term investment of this nature when there is a lot of easy money to be made building and selling quickly.
For what it is worth, it was the lack of affordable housing or building land that resulted in our decision to leave Mull and move to Kintyre.
Cheers
Gary
Cheers
Gary
Gary Sutherland from Carradale
accordig to one source: "One fifth of the population of Mull are forced to live in temporary accommodation because they’ve been priced out of the market. In the Highlands in general, the homelessness figure has increased by 38% in the last ten years compared to 28% for Scotland."
So something has to be done.
Mike from Glasgow
Yes Angus, there is some sadness in the way Coll is loosing (has lost) some of it's cultural identity and without doubt I have had something to do with this just by moving here. However, is it any different to any other areas of the UK? probably not.
Even in your Oban, I hear many non-Oban accents when I visit, especially in the summer when it is teeming with foreign visitors. Oban is no longer how I remember it when I first visited in the 60’s yet I have no wish for it to revert to those ‘good old days’ or feel any sadness for it’s change either.
It is often forgotten that culture itself is a developing art form and in our history customs and cultures were influenced by visitors and people movements of long ago. It is just that in the 21st century the population moves much quicker, and on mass, compared with then.
I don’t wish to be drawn into the age old debate of incomers vs locals (or their nationalities), I’ve had it for the last 30 odd years. Wherever one goes, in any part of Britain, this argument will cause reaction. All I'll suggest is that the 'problem' is universal. I don't quite understand the wishes of non-locals who dream of their holiday patches remaining a museum of their memories.
I'm afraid your analogy of your moving to another part of the world and being upset if all the new ‘locals’ were from Oban doesn't make sense to me. England, for example, is actually much more than just a tiny town just as Scotland is much more than just Oban.
The rural housing problem, second home ownership problem etc.. is universally found in the whole of rural UK (and Europe) and I’m sorry but I don’t see the highland communities being a special case as your last para suggests. The Yorkshire Dales, The Welsh Borders etc. etc. all believe their too are special cases and I would be very concerned if every rural area jumped on this bandwagon and stopped the natural (healthy?) process of peoples moving.
Regulation as suggested for The Yorkshire Dales I find worrying. Regulation against second home ownership I find far less worrying.
Tony from Coll
PS to my last comment
One may conclude from my writing that I am comfortably settled. I am not, I am to be homeless mid April and may have to follow Gary and re-locate.
Even so, I do not like teh Yorkshire Dales' proposal.
Tony from Coll
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