A Victory for Living Rent

This October, in a huge win for tenants, a new Scottish Housing Bill was passed in Holyrood. After almost ten years of pressure from Living Rent, Scotland’s tenants’ and community union, we saw parliament approve the most progress for tenant’s rights in decades.

The scope of these changes suggests that Scotland is ready for a radical change in its housing landscape. Significantly, the new legislation contains provisions to mandate the implementation of Rent Control Areas across areas of Scotland where rent prices have skyrocketed. This means that in certain neighbourhoods, it will only be legal to increase rents by a maximum of inflation plus 1% up to a maximum of 6%. In cities where landlords have been regularly increasing rents by 20-30% at a time, this has potential for huge impact, finally providing tenants with relief from growing living costs. 

In Scotland, we are facing a housing emergency, rent prices in Glasgow and Edinburgh have gone up 104% in Lothian, 88% in Glasgow since 2010. Inflation for the same period was 50%. And this is not just an issue for the cities, but many struggle to find a home in their rural communities as landlords of short-term lets and second home owners have monopolised the housing market. There are thousands of people on waiting lists for appropriate social housing accommodation, many of whom are children, elderly, or disabled. Homeownership is now out of reach for many. Being a landlord, however, remains one of the most reliably profitable business ventures available, with large developers and those fortunate enough to be able to afford additional property exploiting those who cannot afford to own a home. The landlord lobby is incredibly powerful, well-funded, and persistent. With a significant number of MSPs being landlords themselves, it is against incredible odds that this housing bill has made it through with so many new protections for tenants. 

For years, Living Rent members – tenants and their supporters – have gotten organised to fight for better housing for all. With our grassroots approach that pools the resources and skills of our membership, the union campaigned on all fronts for rent controls and, incredibly, have won important ground.

Speaking with people on the streets, collecting data, and building community by supporting individual members with their housing troubles and emergencies, and campaigning at a local level for more council housing have all been ways in which the union has spread their message: we need rent controls, and we need them now. Beyond the work Living Rent does as a union, we’ve made it clear that the tenant’s fight is a worker’s fight, with Scotland’s trade union movement formally backing our demands and supporting our work. Our efforts to build a broad range of support for rent controls beyond the tenants’ movement by working in solidarity with other movements and organisations has undoubtedly helped shift the public’s opinion on the matter, with 82% of Scots now in favour of rent controls. 

Since May 2022, the union has gathered over 13,000 responses to various government consultations, signalling a significant shift in public engagement with housing issues. Additionally, hundreds of people have gathered outside of parliament at every stage of the bill to rally for fairer renting conditions. 

Spokespeople from Living Rent, however, are clear: while this bill is a huge step in the right direction, significant loopholes have weakened the impact these Rent Control Areas will be able to have . Exemptions for build-to-rent and mid-market rental properties among others will jeopardise the effectiveness of rent controls. Members of the union are persistent, committed to continuing to fight not just for robust rent controls, but for the growth of social housing stock, real consequences for landlords who break the laws, and strong protections against eviction among other things. Membership continues to grow and new branches have recently formed in Paisley and Dundee. Alongside more localised causes such as campaigning to save pools and bring bus routes back into public ownership, Living Rent is committed to continuing to fight drastic rent increases and unfair treatment of tenants, especially with the new legislation not set to be implemented until 2027. 

Mary Barbour (1875-1958)

It is not surprising to see the people of Scotland rallying to demand lower rents, in fact just over one hundred years ago we saw Mary Barbour mobilise the women of Govan in the Glasgow Rent Strikes. However, in a post-Thatcher political environment where activism in many areas has been decimated by decades of anti-union and anti-protest legislation, it is a notable change to see working-class, people-led organising growing at this rate and having such a notable effect on party politics. The positive changes made in the new housing bill have largely been brought about by everyday people who believe in protecting their communities. If the trajectory of Living Rent in the last few years is anything to go by, we are bound to see much more change in our housing landscape.

What Living Rent offers is change, change that when we collectively take action we can improve our lives together. Each time a member wins a member defence case or a branch is successful in their campaign, we are demonstrating that we are serious about winning for the working class. Living Rent doesn’t just talk about hope, we fight and win for it.