Scottish Housing Minister Officially Opens Affordable Housing Scheme In Borders
Housing associations, local authorities, developers and other interested parties had until Friday 19th August to let the Scottish Government know what they thought of the latest consultation paper on the way forward for the National Housing Trust (NHT). The deadline came in the same week Housing Minister Keith Brown officially opened Tweed Homes’ project for 51 new affordable homes in the Scottish Borders.
The 26 new homes in Galashiels and 25 in nearby Innerleithen will be let on short-assured tenancies for below-market rent. Within a decade they’ll be offered for sale with tenants given first refusal while the sale will pay for the cost of building the homes in the first place. The scheme is the first of its kind in the UK.
The first families are expected to move into the Galashiels homes in June 2012 while construction on the Innerleithen project begins in April 2012. Scottish Borders Council and six other local authorities agreed to take part in the scheme, administered by the National Housing Trust – an offshoot of the Scottish Government – which was set up in 2010 to ensure more affordable new homes were available to those on low incomes by offering low rents.
At the time it was also seen as an attempt to kick-start the beleaguered construction industry and safeguard employment for thousands of workers. The Tweed Homes project gave work to 200 in the industry.
At the opening Mr Brown praised the NHT for its “creative and innovative” approach which he said would “help address the demand for much needed affordable housing across the country.”
Borders Councillor Ron Smith meanwhile described it as “a blueprint that other authorities in Scotland will want to follow.”
Meanwhile, just 20 miles or so further north from Borders Council, the City of Edinburgh Council has asked the NHT for a loan to go ahead and build 600 affordable new homes in Scotland‘s capital – which commands the highest rents in the country.
The same enthusiasm hasn’t been forthcoming there with homeless organisations claiming although the scheme helps, it does not go far enough. Shelter’s Gordon McRae said although cheaper than private renting the NHT initiative resulted in rents which were higher than a council or housing association home.
“Distinguishing what is meant by ‘socially-rented’ and ‘affordable’ houses matters – because the Scottish Government has recently started to suggest that they are the same – they are not. They fulfil very important but different needs,” he says, adding that NHT properties were 84 per cent of market value.
Scotland’s governing party, the Scottish National Party, promised 6,000 new social-rented houses a year as part of its election manifesto.