Empty houses?

There's been some press speculation about empty houses in Dundee. Cllr MacPherson suggests there are around 4000 and half of them are council or housing association houses.

Not so. 1,165 of these houses are zoned for demolition. These include six multis in Hilltown and parts of Whitfield and Mill o Mains. They also include, strangely, 179 houses used as temporary accommodation for homeless people and another 1,750 privately owned homes which are either lying empty or used as second homes.

All landlords have empty houses which are waiting repairs and relet. At the end of January the Council had 441. Compared to a housing stock of 13,500 houses that's not so bad. However, it's still not good enough and we are putting in a big shift to bring those numbers down. Housing associations have a modest 141.

There are another 384 empties for various reasons; I believe they are mostly in the private sector. Some are empty because the previous occupant has died, gone to jail or gone into full time residential care and the homes may be on sale. Some are mortgage repossessions, and some are under reconstruction.

So in Dundee the main problem with empty homes is in the private sector. We want to see these homes brought back into use. We support the Scottish Government's empty homes initiative. The credit crunch and long waiting lists for rented housing mean we can't afford empty homes in our city.

Very happy to make these figures available to Cllr MacPherson on request ...

Night shelter

Following the post below about homelessness, last night I visited a temporary night shelter being run by volunteers and a church organisation for rough sleepers in the city. The numbers they are dealing with confirm that very few people sleep rough in Dundee; but at the same time a small number of people do sleep rough, for a whole variety of reasons. I hope the project will show whether there are other things the Council should be doing to help this very small number of rough sleepers find their way to the various hostels and other accommodation which exists in the city. When the project reports back, I'll write more on this subject.

Homelessness

A bit of a discussion has been going on in the Evening Tele. Someone called "Housing Observer" was wondering why the Council is demolishing houses when there are so many homeless people in Dundee. I wrote back with the figures.

The Council has around 900 households with homeless priority on its waiting list at any one time. In December of 2010 we had around 170 households in council provided temporary accommodation.

Some houses we have to demolish because they are in such poor condition. But since taking over the Council the SNP has decided to retain six multi storey blocks which would have been demolished under previous plans. We are now investing in them to improve security and, we hope, make them easier to heat.

At the foot of the Hilltown the Dallfield multis are being transformed. Good news is coming shortly about the much trailed recladding scheme, with a combined heat and power scheme to make them energy efficient and far more comfortable. Already there are very few vacancies in these multis, which used to be amongst the most sought after council houses in the city. They will be again!

Sadly it was too late to save the Derby Street multis. People have mixed feelings about their demolition. Some see it as a waste of 374 potentially attractive homes. Others are eagerly looking forward to more light, better views and new, more attractive houses being built in the area.

The credit crunch and Housing Benefit cuts will drive more and more people to the Council's door looking for decent huosing which they can afford. Our job is to provide that housing, keep standards up and balance the budget. There are some difficult times ahead, but we're making real progress.

2011 rent increase

At last night's meeting of the Housing Committee I was forced to rule a motion by Cllr Fraser MacPherson out of order. I have no wish to stifle democratic debate, but Cllr MacPherson made a procedural mistake which left me with little choice.

The rent setting process has two stages ... firstly the Policy and Resources committee sets the budget, then the Housing Committee sets the rent. By law the rent increase must be enough to cover the budget - we are not allowed to subsidise council house rents.

This means that anyone who wants to propose a lower rent increase must first put a motion to the Policy & Resources Committee, cutting something out of the budget.

Cllr MacPherson prepared such a motion, but for reasons unknown failed to put that motion to P&R. As I understand it he had wanted to cut £500,000 off the budgets for preparing relets.

This meant that his proposal to reduce the rent increase would have led to what I would regard as an illegal budget. We would have been half a million short.

In these circumstances I had no option but to rule his motion as incompetent.

It was a long night with a three and a half hour discussion of the biomass plant coming before the housing budget, and it is unfortunate that Cllr MacPherson made this mistake.

In case anyone should imagine that my ruling was an attempt to stifle debate, the rent increase was the subject of a two month consultation; we sent every tenant information about the increase and invited views; and we held open events where tenants could put questions directly to officials.

We also set out the three options at a previous Housing Committee and debated a similar motion from Cllr MacPherson at that time. And last night we chose the lowest of the three options.

No-one wants to put rents up, but we have a legal obligation, imposed by the Scottish Government with all party support, to bring our council houses up to the very basic Scottish Housing Quality Standard. We need to spend around £30 million in this year alone to do that, most of it borrowed. We need to raise rents to cover the cost of that borrowing.

On the other hand, the work we are doing in thousands of homes involves installing new efficient gas central heating systems. They are cheaper to run than most electric systems and tenants will save money as a result.

Something to be proud of ...

All politicians want to make a difference; I'm delighted to say that in Housing we have made one very tangible change. Before the SNP took over in Dundee, the Council let houses which were dirty and in poor condition. That's what the Scottish Housing Regulator said, and many of us knew this to be true.

Now we let houses which are clean, in good decorative order, safe and with everything working. The difference is tremendous. Where necessary, we redecorate with lining paper and magnolia paint. It means new tenants have a blank canvas which they can change to suit their own taste. To make this happen we have had to re-engineer the way we repair and relet houses; doing this simple thing proved more complex than many of us imagined.

The next goal is to reduce the time we take to relet houses. Currently this takes months when it should take weeks. We're working on it and I expect to report more progress soon.

Currently the Council is consulting tenants about the proposed rent increase for next year. The options are 4.5%, 4.75% or 5%. The difference between the options is the time we take to do external maintenance like painting front doors and closes and gutter repairs.

Why do we need to raise rents by this much? The answer is our legal obligation to bring our houses up to the very basic Scottish Housing Quality Standard by 2015. That means new kitchens, bathrooms, roofs, heating systems and other work for many of our properties. The whole thing will cost upwards of £90 million between now and then.

We have to borrow this money and pay it back out of the rents. At least the new heating systems will help tenants save some money, especially those who have old fashioned electric storage heaters.

The Housing Department is looking for efficiencies and has reduced staff costs by more than £400,000 per year. By improving the way we work we hope to find even more savings, all of which will help keep rent increases down.

No-one pretends the rent increase will be popular, but at least the quality of council housing in Dundee is increasing significantly and the new kitchens, bathrooms and heating systems are proving very welcome.

In office at last

The last post on this very neglected blog was before the SNP took over the Administration of Dundee City Council. I'm now Convener of Housing, Dundee Contract Services and Environmental Services. Being this busy meant I had to stand down as Convener of the Dundee Sirolli Project, now known as Clocking Onto Business.

What do I want to do with my new Convenership? I want to offer people council houses in move in condition. I want to get relets done much faster. I want to find a way to ensure that we don't let houses to people who will make their neighbours' lives a misery. And I want to see our houses brought up to the Scottish Housing Quality Standard.

I'd also like to build new council houses, and that will be happening soon. But I am still not convinced that we have a "surplus" of public service housing (ie council and housing association houses) in Dundee, no matter what the experts tell us. I'm looking forward to receiving reports from the Housing Department on the costs and benefits of keeping houses in Derby Street which currently scheduled for demolition.

I have ambitions for the other Departments overseen by the Housing, DCS and Environmental Services Committee. More on those later ...

Rent increase

Last night's Housing Committee meeting increased council house rents by 5.9%. This is a very big increase at a time when inflation is dropping towards 2%.

The Labour/Lib Dem Administration had originally proposed a much higher increase of 7%; I had an increase of 5% in mind; in the end 5.9% was an acceptable compromise.

There are a number of reasons why we need to increase our rents so much. The first is that previous Labour/Lib Dem administrations have saddled us with £125 million in housing debt. 34p of every pound paid in rent goes to pay interest on that debt. Yet we are demolishing schemes such as Maxwelltown where huge amounts of cash were spent just a few years ago.

The second is that we need to improve our houses to meet the Scottish Housing Quality Standard. This is pretty basic and it's not to the Council's credit that we have to spend so much to bring our council houses up to scratch.

The third is that we're clearing various multi storey developments. Many of the tenants are going to housing association properties, so we lose their rents. We are also losing houses through the Right to Buy ... although we get some money in from sales, the rent is lost for ever.

Finally, we could be more efficient. It takes us 68 days to relet one of our more popular houses, and 80 days for less popular houses. Why does it take so long? If we could improve our performance here by just one week, we'd bring in an extra £70,000 in rent.

We supported the 5.9% increase reluctantly. But if and when the SNP becomes Dundee's administration, reletting houses much more swiftlywill be one of our first priorities.