Living Rent: Housing crisis is a 'national disgrace'

And Scotland's councils have spent what some campaigners say is an "outrageous" £720m of public money on placing the homeless in temporary accommodation such as bed and breakfasts and hotels over the last five years because of the housing shortage. 

Meanwhile ten of Scotland's 32 councils have declared their own symbolic housing emergencies.

Ruth Gilbert, Living Rent's national campaigns chair here explains how this was a crisis that was decades in the making and has left tens of thousands of people without a place to call home. 

Scotland’s housing emergency did not happen overnight. It wasn’t caused by Covid or the Scottish Government’s emergency rent cap, despite what landlords argue.

This crisis has been decades in the making and is the result of political choices that successive Westminster and Holyrood governments have made, resulting in a scandalous acceptance of our housing stock as an asset to be gamed, rather than as safe and affordable homes for all. Tenants cannot continue to suffer while landlords accrue more wealth largely unregulated.

Secure housing is essential to a life free from poverty and hardship. If we are serious about addressing the current crisis in homelessness, we must see a fundamental shift towards housing policy for the public good.

There are two central tenets to this: firstly undoing the damage of Thatcher’s Right to Buy and ensuring there are more homes at social rent, and secondly making the private rented sector affordable and secure.

READ MORE:

• Scotland's Housing Emergency – find all articles in series here
• Ministers warned £9bn needed for new homes to end housing emergency
• CIH Scotland: Housing emergency needs political action not words

In the past 40 years, our public housing supply has been decimated by stock transfers, demolition, and the disastrous Right to Buy policy, resulting in a huge increase in tenants renting privately. While the Scottish Government was right to abolish Right to Buy, we must see a bold vision for Scotland’s housing to undo its lasting harms.

To address the crisis, the Scottish government needs to reverse its real-terms cuts to affordable housing in order to build and bring existing stock back into public hands. A properly resourced program of acquisition would also provide a firm response to private landlords’ attempts at blackmail; when they threaten to sell up due to regulation, local authorities must be given first refusal to take the property over with the tenant in place.

Ruth Gilbert (Image: NQ)

We also need to see developers forced to meet the 25% target on affordable housing. Our towns and cities are being transformed by build-to-rent developments completely unaffordable to working-class people. We don’t need more luxury flats - we need homes for social rent. We recognise that increased supply of genuinely affordable housing will take time. This is why tenants must see urgent action on unaffordable rents now.

High rents are one of the key drivers of homelessness, and any serious attempt to tackle Scotland’s housing crisis must address this. We welcome the Scottish Government’s commitment to introduce rent controls, but the detail of these measures matters. The goal of rent controls must be genuine affordability for all, not simply taming the worst excesses of the sector.

Since 2010, private rents have increased by 86% in Greater Glasgow and 79% in Lothian, over 30 points above inflation (45.7%) and far above wage inflation, with workers £11,000 worse off than pre 2008. Such high rents are forcing tenants to choose between remaining in their communities and paying other essential costs.

To truly make private renting affordable, rent controls must apply between tenancies - not just protect sitting tenants. That is how we avoid creating perverse incentives for landlords to evict their tenants to hike rents, as we saw with the rent cap.

Currently, unaffordable rents are subsidised from the public purse to the tune of billions across the UK. From Universal Credit to Local Housing Allowance, the taxpayer is pouring money into the pockets of private landlords. This needs to stop. There are also enormous costs to councils for emergency accommodation, and to the NHS due to health conditions exacerbated by poor quality housing.

Rent controls - alongside a long-term spend-to-save strategy which prioritises the expansion of social housing - would see a reduction in public funds currently being haemorrhaged into the PRS [Private Rented Sector]. Public housing is the most cost-efficient way to meet unmet housing need in Scotland.

We must rethink in whose interests Scotland’s housing stock works. The explosion of short term lets and second homes has rapidly swallowed a significant number of potential homes from our communities.

Every short term let or empty second home is one less home for a family. Tourism has an important role in our economy, but walk through Edinburgh’s old town or almost any Highland community and it is clear this balance is not being struck. The Scottish Government must use every measure available - licensing schemes, taxation, and compulsory purchase orders where necessary - to ensure that everyone in Scotland has a home, before anyone has a second.

Scotland’s housing emergency is also one of disrepair. Every second rented home fails to meet the Scottish Housing Quality Standard, meaning tenants are routinely trapped struggling to pay rent for homes that are in serious disrepair. Living Rent members routinely report properties where the heating doesn’t work, windows won’t shut, ceilings leak, and mould thrives. Currently, there’s no official channel a tenant can use to force their landlord to enact repairs.

And it is not just a problem for tenants, there are tens of thousands of empty homes sitting in Scotland, many in various states of disrepair. Local authorities must be given greater powers to purchase and renovate these properties to bring them back into use.

Read more:

• Crisis: 'Homelessness in Scotland is a political choice'
• Scotland's Housing Emergency: Council finds it is driving depopulation
• 'I lost my handsome boy': Scots mother's plea as over 160 die in housing limbo
• 'Beyond belief': Scotland spends £720m in putting homeless in housing limbo

It is not just rents that are unaffordable, it’s energy too. Scotland’s rented sector contains some of the least energy efficient housing in Western Europe, meaning that tenants suffer twice: first by being trapped in freezing, mouldy, inefficient homes and second by having to pay through the nose to stay warm. A serious program of retrofitting would dramatically raise the living standards of Scotland’s renters, create thousands of good jobs, and slash carbon emissions from domestic heating usage.

Scotland’s housing emergency requires transformative action from this government, now. By delivering the change set out above, this government has the ability to lift hundreds of thousands out of poverty and deliver safe, secure, affordable housing for all.

Ruth Gilbert is the national campaign chair of Living Rent. Living Rent is Scotland’s tenant and community union who are currently campaigning to make sure the Scottish Government’s Housing Bill delivers the change Scotland’s housing system urgently needs.