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Fighting for tenants in Scotland

DANNY PILKINGTON explains how Living Rent have successfully campaigned for their members during Covid and their vision for housing reform

AS VACCINE rollouts and loosened restrictions usher us into a new phase of the pandemic, there is plenty to be optimistic about. The significance of an “end in sight” cannot be overstated.

However, despite the relief that we all feel, there is an underlying dread: as tenants, as precarious workers, as people whose incomes have been hard hit, we know there are challenging times ahead.

The Scottish government has brought in an eviction ban until the September 30 but only in Tier 3 and 4 areas. The furlough scheme is due to wind up at the end of September. Trade unions are already combatting “fire-and-rehire” employment tactics.

Throughout the pandemic, Living Rent members have ramped up the fight against illegal evictions — more than 200 evictions were carried out during the pandemic, many of which illegally — social rent increases and for-profit housing developments.

Since the beginning of the Covid-19 crisis, tenants’ organising has played a vital role in mitigating the lacklustre protections for tenants implemented by government.

Living Rent members and allies were the driving force behind the Scottish government’s decision to extend the eviction ban beyond Christmas and again until mid-May.

This was an essential measure to see us through Covid-19. Yet, the fact that so many tenants in Scotland have to confront the threat of eviction is itself a withering indictment of our housing model.

We have seen soaring rents in the private rented sector (where 50 per cent of homes are in a state of disrepair) and in the social sector (in Glasgow, social rents have increased by almost 20 per cent since 2014), alongside massive shortages of decent, energy efficient social housing stock. According to the Joseph Rowntree Trust, in October 2020, 33 per cent of private renters and 40 per cent of social tenants already lived in poverty. What will it be now and in the coming months?

This is why, throughout election season, Living Rent members have been pushing for bold and ambitious policy reforms which address the scale of this crisis by speaking to MSP candidates and by organising on the ground to fight back against stealth rent increases, speculative private housing and ongoing mould, damp and energy haemorrhaging in our homes.

Scotland’s tenants deserve decent, affordable and secure housing and we will continue to organise to ensure that this becomes a reality.

In terms of security, the eviction ban, for one thing, must be extended regardless of the tier in which Scotland is and most grounds must be made discretionary to account for tenants’ situations.

We need a permanent winter eviction ban to protect tenants during the months where they are most vulnerable. But as a protection measure for tenants, a winter break should be treated as nothing more than a safety net. The demand for safe and secure housing requires a systemic reform of the price and quality of housing.

It is now widely acknowledged that rent pressure zones have completely failed to curb soaring rents, so much so that no local authority has ever been able to implement one due to the unrealistic evidence requirements.

In the social sector, tenants face rent increases year in year out, without having much of a choice as “consultations” reach few tenants and offer limited options. Prior to the Holyrood elections, Living Rent members carried out a nationwide social housing rent consultation, flipping the process on its head.

Tenants throughout the country shared their experiences of rent increases, saying how stressful they were but also how unfair, given their experiences of ongoing repair issues and a lack of services.

Social landlords are becoming increasingly large and unaccountable corporate entities, offering obscenely high salaries for housing association senior management and heeding to financial interest over tenants’ needs.

The shift to corporatism in social housing — where tenants are often referred to as customers — represents a glaring contradiction that cannot be overlooked.

Living Rent is calling for social rent consultations to be made statutory, alongside the introduction of proper rent controls, using a Scottish Rent Affordability Index which pegs maximum rents at genuinely affordable levels and a points-based system of rent controls linked to the quality and amenities of a property rather than market rates.

For too long, landlords have been able to hike up rents in between tenancies in accordance with an inflated housing market — as the properties themselves fall into states of complete disrepair. This needs to stop and we will hold the coming Parliament to introduce genuine rent controls and statutory rent consultations.

In terms of quality, across Scotland tenants’ experiences are defined by the lack of accountability placed on their landlords — public, social and private alike. There is little consequence for landlords whose properties are in poor enough condition to pose health risks, yet expensive enough to leave people living in poverty.

We need a minimum standard for homes that forces landlords to carry out essential repairs; effective and independent reviewing and reporting of quality; and a massive programme of investment to retrofit homes and bring them up to the highest energy efficiency ratings. Social housing needs to follow a model that ensures the provision of quality and genuinely affordable homes.

Where we do see large volumes of energy efficient housebuilding, or plans for large-scale housing developments on urban vacant land it often comes under for-profit models such as Build to Rent, luxury housing or gated communities.

Over the past 20 or so years, 66,000 social homes have been demolished in Scotland — 40,000 of these have taken place in Glasgow alone. Now, amid a city-wide housing crisis, rather than prioritising these pieces of land for social housing, we’re seeing extortionate, private developments (Build to Rent, luxury housing etc) springing up everywhere.

These builds centralise capital in the hands of “super-landlords” and drive up rental prices in communities where tenants are already facing high rents in the PRS and housing stock shortages in the socially rented sector.

Living Rent has been fighting this vision of building private housing, underpinned by debt and unaffordable to most, all year — and will continue to do so until there is a restorative justice approach for the communities left behind by social housing demolitions and under-investment.

Danny Pilkington is chair of the Partick Living Rent branch in Glasgow.

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