Why Scotland needs rent controls

Originally written as a speech for the Living Rent Govan & Ibrox Branch AGM 2025

Rent is a tax that poor people pay to rich people for the right to live in society
@existentialcoms

We are in the middle of a housing crisis. In Glasgow, across Scotland and the whole of the UK. Why? Because wages are stagnant and rent is too damned high.

Rents in Scotland went up more than 50% between 2010 and 2023^[1]. In Glasgow they increased more than 80% in the same time period.

Has anyone's wages or benefits increased 80%?

All while landlords are interviewed for tv segments complain about how hard it is to be a landlord, that if they don't raise rents they won't be able to continue being landlords. Meanwhile their tenants have to decide between paying their rent and feeding their children.

And despite these increases, us tenants are still living in cold, damp houses riddled with mold. With mushrooms growing in our showers. With rats in our kitchens. How many of us have been told "just open a window" when we complain about the damp?

Landlords have shown that they cannot be trusted to regulate themselves; which is why we need the government to step in and regulate the private rental market for us.

The Scottish government are on stage 2 of a bill to bring in desperately needed rent controls, something Living Rent has been fighting for since its inception.

But we're not there yet. At every stage landlords have been fighting back. They are fighting to water down the bill so that the proposed rent controls cover as few properties as possible.

Right now their target is so-called "mid-market rent" properties and build to rent or as I like to call them "too fucking expensive properties".

Incidentally, build to rent is what one Glasgow City Councillor touted as the solution to Glasgow's housing crisis. Build to rent for whose benefit?

Now is the time to fight back, to tell the Scottish government they work for us, the people of Scotland, not the interests of handful of wealthy landlords and property companies

Tell the government that we demand the following:^[2]

• permanent and universal rent controls that cover ALL rented housing,
• no exceptions for landlords who carry out repairs - no rewards for doing the bare minimum,
• no incentivising market rent, which is unaffordable to most. We need rent controls that bring rents down.

Housing is a fundamental human right:^[3] it's high time we put a stop to parasitic landlords making obscene amounts of profit from our hard work and basic human needs.

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