Home truths

Ian Lewis (Letters, 19 April) asks what difference it makes to 
another if a person buys his 
council house instead of renting it for 30 years. I’m afraid this is a case of not seeing the wood for the trees; individual houses may not matter, but the collective housing stock does.

Some years back, I was in a 
furniture shop when a lady asked me if I knew a local delivery
company. She lived in Edinburgh, but owned an ex-council house in Aberfeldy as a holiday home, 
furnished from this shop.

She had bought another ex-council house in Caithness for a second holiday home, but wanted to get her furniture from this shop again.

Thus were two potential family homes removed from the stock.

Perhaps Mr Lewis has missed it, but over the years I’ve seen many cases like this in The Scotsman and elsewhere. Rural ex-council housing ends up as holiday homes and local young people leave or end up living in caravans. Urban areas have also suffered from “second homes syndrome”, with thousands of homes being removed from the common pool. Again, the rich have gained at the expense of the poor.

The Tories sold off council houses because they thought it meant votes for them from new owners. Now they moan that 
ungrateful Scots bought their houses and still didn’t vote Tory.

It was calculated that, on
average, five sold council houses raised money to build another.

This could have been ring-fenced and homelessness among working people all but wiped out by now.

Instead, they cut payments to councils which, with rising 
benefit requirements for the 
unemployed etc, spent it 
elsewhere. I hope that alerts you to the situation, Mr Lewis.

Thomas R Burgess

St Catherine’s Square

Perth