On Thursday 26th September 2024, our Edinburgh City Chair Eilidh Keay spoke to Edinburgh City Council's full council asking them to back Rent Controls. The council voted in favour. Edinburgh City Council has become the first council in Scotland to formally support the introduction of Rent Controls. A strong commitment to implementation once the Scottish Government passes Rent Controls into law.
If you want get involved in fighting for Rent Controls, join Living Rent and come along to a local meeting: livingrent.org/events
Full deputation:
"Good morning Lord provost and thank you for allowing this deputation.
My name is Eilidh, I am the Edinburgh Chair of Living Rent, Scotland’s tenant and community union. For the last decade we have campaigned for the reintroduction of rent controls and we welcome the Scottish Government's commitment to reintroduce by the end of this parliamentary term.
As both this council, and the Scottish government work towards ending their respective housing emergencies, many of us are asking the question - what is to be done?
Some will argue that the housing emergency is simply one of under supply. While this may be true - we do not have enough social housing stock - this ignores a very real reality, that the private rented sector has been allowed to both rapidly increase in size, and exist almost entirely unregulated - at the cost of tenants, of communities, of local authorities and the wider economy.
Tenants in Edinburgh are paying the most expensive rents in Scotland. A one bed flat now is easily over 1,100 pounds per month, a figure which is only set to increase and one which is entirely unaffordable to working people. After the lifting of the Emergency Rent Cap in April, over 150 people in Edinburgh report their rent hikes to us. It was found that tenants on average received a rent increase of 17%, with the highest reported being a 52% rent increase. As thousands across the city have not reported rent increases, we worry that this number is indeed larger.
A member, who has asked to remain anonymous, says in regards to her rent increase, I’m a single mum and sole carer to my autistic child. I’ve had a number of rent increases over the last two years, the latest of which was issued unlawfully and I was threatened with eviction if I did not accept it. I cant afford to move and I don’t want my child to have to move schools. Stories like this are all too common.
In April of this year, we published a survey which had over 700 respondents. Of these respondents 73% said that worrying about rent increases has impacted their mental health. 61% of respondents said they are living with outstanding disrepair problems in their home, and 31% of respondents, living with damp and mould currently.
Tenants need change, and we need it now. Critics tend to have knee-jerk reactions claiming that they “simply don’t work”. But this isn’t true, well-designed rent controls can provide much needed affordability and security, and improve the quality of private stock. Laurie Macfarlene, an economist says,
“such neoclassical assumptions - that rents are a matter of supply and demand - are detached from reality. Housing markets are one of the least competitive types of markets there is. In other words: the textbook model of rent controls is based on assumptions and criticisms that bear no resemblance to the real world. When these assumptions are altered to better reflect the real world, studies show that well-designed rent controls can be welfare enhancing.”
The same arguments which are used against rent controls were also used against the introduction of minimum wage. Minimum wage was seen as an economically illiterate policy which would massively increase unemployment rates and deter investment. Today, it is arguably the most effective poverty-reducing policy of recent memory. Rent controls have this potential too.
In fact, we have a long history of rent controls. First won by the Glasgow Women's Housing Association in the now infamous 1915 rent strikes, rent controls were in place until Thatcher abolished them in 1988. More importantly, these rent controls worked. In 1980 a private tenant paid 10% of their income on rent. Today, private tenants average 30% of their income on rent, and this increases to 50% for those of us on low wages. This history of rent controls was one which included a universal political agreement of both their effectiveness and necessity. In 1971, The Conservative Peer, Lord Sandford told the house of Lords “The Government's aim is to foster conditions which are fair to both landlords and tenants; and it is encouraging to learn from the Committee that by and large the system of rent regulation, introduced by the last Government, works well.” That conservative government then went on to both extended and strength control provisions.
For those in the room who’s political inclination rests on tradition, then I’m sure you’ll be delighted to hear me say we should return to tradition. A tradition of strong and robust rent controls, a tradition where taxpayer money isn’t funding private landlord profits through ever increasing demand on housing benefits, and a tradition where tenants aren’t constantly worried about becoming homeless because of their next rent increase, or becoming ill due to mould and damp.
Since Thacher, we’ve had a 40 year long experiment of deregulation of private housing. It is safe to say this experiment has failed. We now face unprecedented levels of homelessness, the most expensive rents on record, and the worst quality housing in the OECD according to the Resolution Foundation. To say that we should continue to leave the private rented sector unregulated, knowing how harmful it is to those who live in it, is either remarkably naive, or worse, undoubtedly cruel.
Tenants cannot wait for more homes to be built. We are in crisis now. With each passing day the effects of our unregulated private rented sector become increasingly acute. While we all are sat here, many across our city will be making the choice between food, heating and rent. Many will be consumed with the anxiety of yet another extortionate rent increase, of the threat of eviction or of homelessness.
Tenants across the city are urging councillors to vote in favour rent controls today. Given the severity of the crisis in Edinburgh the rent control question is no longer up for debate. We need rent controls and we need them now."
You can watch the deputation video here: https://democracy.edinburgh.gov.uk/ieListDocuments.aspx?CId=150&MId=7292&Ver=4
