One in 17 people in city waiting for a council house

Published on Monday 1 June 2009 09:57

ONE in every 17 people in Edinburgh is waiting for a new council house.

The council house waiting list has grown by more than a thousand people in the past year to nearly 27,000 people.

Housing leader Councillor Paul Edie said today there was "not a snowball's chance in hell" that the city would hit targets to eradicate homelessness by 2012 with current levels of Scottish Government funding.

An average of 154 people now bid for each vacant council home, up five per cent on last year. In 2003 there were just 29 bids per property.

A total of 719 people made a bid for the most popular property in the past three months, which was in Saughtonhall, while even the least popular area, which the council has declined to identify, was attracting an average of 79 bidders for each empty property.

Figures for the first three months of 2009 show the waiting list had 26,898 people on it, compared with 25,738 at the same time last year – and 22,580 in 2004.

The list includes everyone waiting for their first council home, as well as those in temporary accommodation and those whose current home is unsuitable.

Around 5,000 households currently present themselves to the council as homeless every year, while only 2,000 properties become free for rent annually.

Edinburgh Council is to begin building its first council housing in a generation at Gracemount next year, with the construction of 1,100 homes, but only 139 of them are set to be available for low cost rent from the council. It is estimated 12,000 new affordable homes will be needed in the Capital over the next decade.

Councillor Edie said: "Whilst we are doing more than ever to build more affordable homes there is still a significant gap between the number we can build and what is realistically needed.

"We've had an increase in government funding and we're really grateful for that but it's still not enough. We have a duty to eradicate unintentional homeless by 2012 and at current levels of funding there's not a snowball's chance in hell we're going to do that."

Demand for council properties in the capital is so high that it has no 'hard to let' areas. The most popular area is Corstorphine/Murrayfield, where the average number of people bidding for each available home was 631.

Earlier this month the council announced that it would set up an online swap shop enabling council tenants to put their homes up for exchange. It is hoped the system will increase the number of sought-after larger family homes made available.

A spokeswoman for homelessness charity Shelter said the figures supported the organisation's own findings: "It's just as difficult to get a social rented house in Edinburgh as it was last year because demand continues to outstrip supply."

IN DEMAND

The areas receiving the highest number of applicants for each available council house are:

1. Corstorphine/Murrayfield

2. City Centre

3. Southside/Newington

4. Leith Walk

5. Craigentinny/Duddingston