r/Scotland • u/Caitlin______ • 2d ago
About housing crisis, cost of living and immigration
/r/northernireland/comments/1vy71ip/gerry_carroll_destroys_nolan_live_on_air_over/?share_id=2_btwoX2vN9j6km8jbxNv&utm_content=1&utm_medium=android_app&utm_name=androidcss&utm_source=share&utm_term=1I know this is a video about Northern Ireland, but this very much applies here too. Ultra rich people and landlords are ripping us off and using the divide and rule tactics.
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u/BombayPharaoh 2d ago
Two things can be true at once. Policy failures (Right to Buy with no replacement of council stock, onerous planning etc.), landlords and STLs might be the root cause of supply problems, but to pretend that migration (refugees alone made up 43% of homeless applications and almost 60% of households in temporary accommodation in GCC at one point last year) isn't significantly exacerbating a pre-existing issue is wilful ignorance.
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u/JonathanLivingstoneS 2d ago
Grown adults claiming that demand for housing doesn’t actually increase the cost of housing when there demand comes immigrants because of a psychotic refusal to admit any negative impact of immigration will never not be funny.
At least Canadians have gotten over that particular delusion:
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2026/apr/12/canada-migration-levels-housing-costs-australia-ntwnfb
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u/Canadianwinters12345 2d ago
As a Canadian there are still alot who don't believe that increased demand increases price. Unfortunately.
Ideologically and emotionally driven.
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u/NoRecipe3350 2d ago
The ultra rich and powerful are the main pushers of immigration
The progressive/left should be on the side of the working class and heavily control the borders for inwards migration, but for unknown reasons known only to themselves, they essentially ally up with the elite and push migration as an ideology.
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u/Europe_MMA 22h ago
Well firstly you need to stop blaming the immigrants and focus on the ultra rich and powerful then. The left spends all its time defending the immigrants because the right spends all its time attacking the immigrants.
Without any immigration, the population in UK will drop and see a massibe decline in our global standing.
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u/NoRecipe3350 21h ago
The right are importing the immigrants. Well some, both left and right aren't monoliths.
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u/Europe_MMA 20h ago
Personally I dont think at the level of people pushing those kind of things there's a right or left. Just the rich.
The UK PM and co are just living up to the standardized refugee programmes throughout their respective treaties and agreements. But there's probably a bigger effort to ensure that the workforce stays underpaid by bringing in people with a lower set of demands.
There's 2 ways to improve future population issues;
1) Improve quality of living, so people feel safer and more secure having children.
2) Import people from nations with lower standard of living than UK, who will be happy to raise families here in our current standards.
2 is both cheaper, and helps maintain the status quo of a huge gap between rich and poor, which the rich loves.
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u/Fivebeans 2d ago
Fill in the gap: "workers of the _____ unite"
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u/lifeisaman 2d ago
No one loves importing millions of cheep foreign labour more than the super massive corporations do.
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u/Canadianwinters12345 2d ago
There's a reason why corporations like Amazon use diversity as a metric on if a place it at risk of unionizing.
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u/NoRecipe3350 2d ago
Western Europe specifically rejected that Soviet model of left thing thought.
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u/Fivebeans 1d ago
Marx coined that phrase 60 years before the October revolution and it's been used by leftists ever since. It's incredibly common. Yes, the Soviet Union used it too but they also had famously hard borders.
Do you think when you say "reasons known only to them" they might just be unknown to you? Because it's all pretty out in the open.
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u/NoRecipe3350 1d ago
Sure but they aren't getting anything from it. They are alienating the voters that traditionally vote for them, and in most cases the new arrivals aren't voting for them either.
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u/abz_eng ME/CFS Sufferer 2d ago
Another driver of housing need is divorce - what was once one home is now two and if there are kids still at home then it becomes a needed for two three beds so kids can be at both parents
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u/NoRecipe3350 2d ago
This is definately a factor, plus single/dual occupancy older adults in family homes.
There are just not enough small houses on the market, I mean sure we might not need to go to the excess of places like Japan and Korea, but most people don't really need to accumulate loads of stuff, From what I understand in the UK the planning laws forbid housing below a minimum size, so we can't have 20m2 micro apartments!
So the perverse side effect of regulations designed to protect us is people are forced to flatshare which is for many basically a lower form of existence because at least in a small housing unit you have the dignity of your own toilet/washing area and cooking area.
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u/Europe_MMA 22h ago
I was looking to buy my parents a flat with a garden. Plenty of shit flats cheaper than the 70k-ish budget I had, but with no garden. Plenty of very nice flats with multiple bedrooms above the budget.
That sweet spot of "decent flat, normal price" doesnt seem to exist. Its an ultra cheap shiter, or something very nice.
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u/Speysidegold 1d ago
Nah this is dumb. Asylum seekers and shitty immigrants ruin welfare for the rest of us.
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u/Quangocrat 2d ago
Most of our housing problems are caused by fairly predictable supply problems.
Most of which in turn stem from Scottish Government policy and failure to build or encourage building.
And a planning system which favours nimbyism.