Nimbyism

This is from a report on East Renfrewshire in today's National:

The chairman of the Newton Mearns Community Council told the  Eastwood Extra: "East Renfrewshire has changed in a single generation from a leafy, community-spirited, commuter conurbation to a crumbling urban sprawl with overstretched infrastructure."

Later in the same report, a Tory councillor says: "We are absolutely overloaded and the frustration is that the majority of people who come to live in Giffnock come for a specific reason and that's the health and wellbeing that we have around here."

Yes, the Nimbys are out in force in East Renfrewshire in these days leading up to the council elections.

So let's just clarify: East Renfrewshire is not crumbling. It's still leafy and it's definitely still community-spirited. People move in here and don't leave for a very good reason. The health and wellbeing of residents remain intact. What some people see as 'urban sprawl' is in fact houses being built so that people who were born and brought up in East Renfrewshire - like my nephews - can afford to live here. And the number of houses being built is finite because it's limited by the amount of land available to build on.

These comments remind me of the people living in leafy suburbia in places like Surrey who oppose on principle every single building initiative because it will change the place. The result of that attitude - and the fact that councils are forbidden to use the money they made from selling council houses to build more - has been to leave the UK short of one million houses. The population has grown and demand for homes has increased because the shape of households has changed over a couple of generations, with more and more one-person households. Thatcher's infamous phrase 'the property-owning democracy' and the Nimby attitude have resulted in a runaway house market in the south east of England, a massive rise in 'buy to let' properties, and renting at extortionate prices by people who will never be able to buy a home. The worst possible situation for anyone trying to get on the property ladder.

We in Scotland - at least so long as we have our own parliament - can do things about the infrastructure being 'overstretched': local councils can require builders to improve the infrastructure if they want to build houses; they can demand a mix of private and social housing on every new estate; they can insist on buyers being resident in the country (so property is not sold to overseas residents for 'buy to let'), as they do in Scandinavia; they can tax second and third and fourth homes. What none of us can do is stop change happening.

I heard someone make a comment recently about East Renfrewshire being taken over by 'schemies.' As a former schemie, I take exception to that kind of snobbery. Glasgow is a warning to us all. What kept Glasgow a vibrant community right up to the 1960s was the mix of people who lived there. People from all over came to live in Glasgow. What has destroyed a lot of Glasgow is the loss of that mix of people: now we have 'poor' areas, so clear to the eye as you pass through them on a bus that writers of Scottish noir novels can write about their heroes going looking for drug dealers in certain areas, confident they'll find them.

East Renfrewshire is not that like that and people like the two above should be ashamed to suggest it is.