Edinburgh Tenants Federation (ETF) welcomes the opportunity to provide a response to Housing: Fresh Thinking, New Ideas. It is encouraging to see ideas coming from the Scottish Government that may address some of the crises facing Scottish housing today. There are a number of aspects from our response that ETF would like to highlight.
We believe that a need for affordable rented housing should be the top priority for the Scottish Government. At the end of August 2010, there were 25,127 people on the waiting list for social housing in Edinburgh. To address this inbalance, it is essential to change the choice based letting system and take away the points based system. This has a particular effect on rural areas.
Edinburgh Tenants Federation has worked alongside the City of Edinburgh Council to ensure that front line staff in Edinburgh have received appropriate training to help vulnerable groups. We would like to see this happening throughout Scotland.
We believe that the Right to Buy should be scrapped with immediate effect. In trying to eradicate homelessness, we believe that the private sector could have a role to play if they are properly regulated. Private sector tenants must have the same rights as both Registered Social Landlord (RSL) and Council tenants.
To improve the fairness of rent structures across the housing system, there should be a full consultation with tenants as part of the Housing Scotland Act 2001. It will be important to encourage and make it easier for people to downsize to smaller properties.
Tenants should be involved in consultations on the design of houses. It will be important that the homes fall in line with the Climate Change Scotland Act 2009. In order for local communities to improve the places in which they live and work, it is important to listen to tenants on the ground and there should be more tenant participation.
In order for people to be empowered to influence performance and housing outcomes, there should be more funding made available for tenant participation and more meaningful feedback.