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Encouraging signs of dissent to housing policy orthodoxy
A view over Glasgow from Queen’s Park in the city’s south side [John Lindie / Creative Commons]

WHEN writing his acclaimed new history of council housing, Municipal Dreams, John Boughton decided that attempting to reach north of the border would be “a bridge too far.” 

It was not worth doing in this volume, Boughton said at the Edinburgh International Book Festival this week, because he could not give Scotland “the respectful coverage it deserves.”

But Scotland, Boughton says, is in fact offering some of the most encouraging signs of dissent to housing policy orthodoxy — from the abolition of right to buy to the growth of grassroots campaigns like Living Rent.

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