A SCOTTISH local authority is considering plans to buy up former Airbnb flats to provide housing for homeless people.
Edinburgh councillors are discussing snapping up properties which had been used for short-term lets before a drop in demand sparked by the Covid-19 crisis prompted owners to put them up for sale.
Hotels which do not reopen once lockdown ends could also potentially be used to house homeless people.
Deputy council leader Cammy Day told the Edinburgh Evening News: “We’ve already started the discussion internally in the council that there will likely be properties come available through short-term lets, Airbnb-type businesses, which we don’t see as being so successful in the coming year or two.
"Is this a chance for us to buy up properties to add to the council’s stock immediately, to get people who will at some point have to come out of these hotels into some permanent accommodation?"
He added: “And I’m sure some of these big hotel chains might not go back as hotels in future, so we’re keeping an eye on that – is there a chance to transform them into some form of supported living arrangement as well?”
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Day’s comments come as the Edinburgh Poverty Commission, of which he is vice-chair, warned the coronavirus crisis had worsened existing inequality in a city where an estimated 80,000 people live in poverty.
Commission chair Jim McCormick praised the council for acting quickly to find temporary accommodation for homeless people by securing more than 200 bed spaces in hotels and private flats, but stated: “The fundamental pressures of Edinburgh’s housing system have not changed and without commitment of new resources it cannot be assumed that these gains can be sustained once this phase of the outbreak is over.
“Before this crisis what was so distinctive about Edinburgh was the extent to which poverty was driven by the lack of affordable housing.”
McCormick concluded: “The only way out of this problem is to be able to boost genuinely affordable housing.”
Edinburgh Poverty Commission member Diana Noel-Paton added: “The opportunity for homeless people to be housed in hotels has been one of the best things to happen during this crisis,” she said.
"It could be a transformational new start for some people.”
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