My father’s childhood home was a tenement in Gellatly Street, where the car park now is. My mother was pan-loafy, she was from South Tay Street.
Further back up my family tree, the 1800s addresses are the Cowgate, Scourin Burn, Lower Pleasance, and Charles Street.
The town centre was densely populated back then, but the situation is very different now.
I note Dundee’s newest student housing development, on Brown Street, is complete. It has 150 rooms, with a second phase under construction.
There’s permission for 179-capacity student accommodation in the Marketgait.
Last year, plans were submitted for the BT building on Bell Street to become a 417-unit student block.
There are other recently-completed student complexes around the city centre – Parker House (500 students), Belmont (340), Seabraes (411), and several more.
The city centre, certainly the west side, is a student supercampus.
Now I’m not saying students aren’t welcome, or that they shouldn’t have nice, safe, modern places to stay. This isn’t an anti-student rant.
What I am trying to highlight is true of every Scottish city.
The building of affordable, clean, well-designed housing for born-and-bred Dundee people isn’t moving at anything like the pace that student accommodation is being built.
If the city centre is to become a high-density living area again, reversing the decades-long practice of decanting everyone to the schemes, Dundee people should have the opportunity to move into the centre too.
If shops are closing and the centre is to be a socialising hub, then Dundonians living there all year round should be a big part of that.
And there’s something really not fair about nice places for students springing up in the centre, while houses out in the city’s dirty and neglected schemes remain cold, draughty, and damp.
When you read stories of flats with black mould or leaking roofs it is surely obvious that safe, warm, dry housing for families should be top priority for the council, Holyrood and Westminster.
Here’s the bit I don’t understand: if including social housing is mandatory in newbuild private estates, why doesn’t the same apply when student newbuilds are given permission?
Dundee flats shouldn’t just be for students
When student flats proposals go before city planners, a close-by (not too close) selection of attractive, affordable starter flats for young people to get on the housing ladder should be part of the deal – or the developer doesn’t get their cash-cow student residences.
I also fear higher education numbers won’t grow as fast as in recent years.
There’s many an MA and BA stacking supermarket shelves, with a usurious student loan round their neck, who could have opted for a plumbing apprenticeship and the £400 or £500 per day a good tradesman costs these days.
School pupils are noticing that.
And the flood of overseas students could dry up. UK and US universities are looking to take advantage of law changes in India and build offshoot campuses there. The same might happen in China.
If the student accommodation bubble bursts, one-person “pods” with shared facilities aren’t easily converted to flats or family homes.
What then for Dundee city centre?
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