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Govan mid-market tenants fight off rent increase

Tenants from the Water Row development in Govan recently celebrated a massive win after fighting against their second rent increase in just 13 months.The initial rent increase was served just weeks before the majority of tenants were due to move in.  Feeling they had no choice but to proceed with moving in due to their various personal circumstances, many continued to sign the rent agreements. Just 13 months down the line, they received a notification that their rent would be increased again by 10.6%. This meant their total rent rise since first accepting the properties would be 49% (a £300 increase). This caused a lot of distress and hardship for the tenants and some were forced to move out as they were unable to afford to remain in their flats. One tenant, Heather, said, “The last five years have been very challenging, especially since I live alone. I moved into the midmarket property to try to ease the financial pressure I’ve been under. The rent increases have been unbelievable. On top of all my other bills increasing and losing the winter fuel allowance, this rent increase is a massive shock to the system. I am also recovering from cancer and the stress was having a huge impact on my health.” Water Row tenant Caitlin led the initial fight, gathering tenants together to talk about the increases and joining Living Rent.  “It was completely unjust”, she said, “no one should have to live in a flat they can’t afford, and I worry that this is going to happen more and more not just in Govan, but across Scotland.” Residents and members of Living Rent had been due to protest at Govan Cross against the increases on 18 June. However, the evening before the action, the tenants received an email informing them the increase had been reversed. The Water Row Company apologised, and committed to a rent freeze until April 2026, as well as reimbursing rent paid from May 2025 and agreeing to consult on the next rent increase. Due to the last-minute reversal, Water Row tenants and other Living Rent members gathered to celebrate instead.  This is a huge victory for the residents of Water Row. This shows what happens when tenants come together, get organised and refuse to let their landlords boss them around. The experience of Water Row tenants highlights the complete lack of regulation or oversight of the mid-market sector. Mid-market rent is supposed to be affordable for people on low incomes: how can these tenants be expected to fork up increases that have increased at the rate of the open market? Right now, the government is considering mid-market tenancies being exempted from rent controls. These tenants’ experience should highlight just why rent controls are vital for all tenants.

Leith members win against PBSA

Leith branch wins PBSA campaign at Dalton Scrapyard - again! For the past two years Leith members have been campaigning for better housing options in Leith and against unaffordable developments, with a recent win in the campaign at the national level! The issue   Purpose built student accommodation (PBSA) developments are coming up more and more across Edinburgh. Although this accommodation claims to be for students, it is too expensive for the majority of students, and crucially it doesn't serve to address the housing crisis in Edinburgh. The numbers of people facing homelessness, in unsuitable temporary accommodation, and paying extortionate rents is increasing across the city, while we keep seeing unaffordable developments prioritised. Obviously communities need to take action.   Leith has seen the increase of PBSA in the area despite not having any universities or colleges in the area, yet nearly two-thirds of all Edinburgh PBSA bed spaces in planning are here. That’s over 6,000 beds out of 9,800 citywide. We desperately need more social housing and actually affordable housing rather than overpriced student flats that even students can't afford. These developments put a strain on local services such as transport and healthcare, isolate students from the rest of the community, and provide housing only for one group rather than a mixed group of residents. These developments benefit developers alone who are making obscene profits from students and take away scarce land that we could be using for housing to serve the whole community. Often PBSA is turned into short term lets in summer as well exacerbating existing problems with short term lets in the city. We know that international student numbers are reducing therefore reducing the need for expensive PBSA in the city. Student homelessness and difficulty for students to find suitable accommodation is still an issue despite large amounts of PBSA developments across the city because they only serve to increase the profits of developers and squeeze the communities around them.   The Leith branch voted to fight against the Dalton scrapyard PBSA development in June 2023. This was the second PBSA campaign Living Rent had taken on in Edinburgh with the campaign against the development at the former Tynecastle High School won at a council level but ultimately ruled in favour by the Scottish Reporter.   How we won   Development campaigns can often be long and drawn out with several phases. There is both the timeline of the council’s planning process which is incredibly bureaucratic as well as a timeline for public engagement with the campaign. This campaign managed both successfully.   We mobilised around the period for consultation with over 100 responses endorsing our detailed considerations around the application as it went in. Objections to developments can only take into account ‘material considerations’ which includes: the height of the property, pollution, building size, the current City Plan; rather than provision for residential housing. We highlighted the impact this would have on strained local services like healthcare and parking. PBSA have lower standards than residential housing with the ability to have less green space, smaller flats and shared kitchens which make them challenging to convert to residential housing afterwards.   We had a really effective public engagement strategy in this campaign with big public events in 2024, we held lots of stalls, a vision day where we worked with others locally to create a vision of what we wanted the site to hold instead of unaffordable housing. Our key event was a successful town hall where councillors and a local MSP agreed to the campaign demands and to prioritise social housing over unaffordable lets as well as hosting contributions from other organisations and members with key questions.    In January 2025, two members gave a deputation to the council about the campaign as they decided on the application and we were successful - the application was refused! It was clear from our outreach that the local community wanted to see social housing in the site, not just luxury unaffordable flats. However the campaign wasn’t over yet - developers have the right of appeal where communities don’t which is hugely unjust. The developers appealed to the Scottish Reporter. The decision was upheld and the community was listened to.   One of the challenges with a development and planning related campaign can simply be the length of the campaign - they often take years and can be frustrating for members along the way, this campaign was definitely lengthy but the effective public engagement drove the campaign towards the finish line.    The fight continues   We celebrate the success of this victory however we know that there is still work to do. The local community wants to see social and affordable housing in this site and a better option for the area. In Leith alone, there is at least two other large scale PBSAs either in planning with expectations that permission will be granted on Bangor Road and Manderston Street.   PBSA remains an issue in Edinburgh, not just in Leith but across the city. Two branches in Edinburgh voted to tackle a campaign around the City Plan 2040 to influence the PBSA guidance in the upcoming City Plan. If successful this will influence the direction of planning in the city for ten years so will have a huge material impact on future planning campaigns and cases.    It is clear Edinburgh needs a better solution - get active in your local branch to ensure communities are heard when it comes to planning.

Landlords pocket millions in public money as tenants unable to afford private rents

With rents across Scotland getting more and more extortionate, a lot of tenants are being forced to rely on Housing Benefit, or the Universal Credit Housing Element that is slowly replacing it. This includes jobseekers, pensioners, Disabled people who can’t work, and those whose income from employment is not enough to cover their basic needs. Both of these payments are calculated using the Local Housing Allowance (LHA) for the area the claimant is renting in. But how do these rates compare to actual rent prices? To see what this looked like for Glasgow, we headed off to Zoopla (a widely used property letting website) and recorded the 25 most recent listings for one, two and three bedroom homes respectively. We then found the equivalent amounts of housing benefit/housing element those living in them would be entitled to using the LHA Rate Calculator. The findings were not surprising, but still felt like a massive slap in the face. Landlords are charging such high rent that it's almost impossible to find a home which could be covered by LHA.   1 bedroom: Maximum Housing Payment: £639.8pcm Average rent: £927pcm Difference: £287.2pcm Out of 25 homes, only two did not exceed the maximum amount that can be awarded.   2 bedrooms: Maximum Housing Payment: £782.48pcm Average rent: £1206pcm Difference: £423.92pcm Out of 25 homes, just one could be fully covered.   3 bedrooms: Maximum Housing Payment: £892.92pcm Average rent: £1743.2pcm (that’s just £92 under the maximum payment a family affected by the benefit cap can get in total from Universal Credit each month)  Difference: £850.28pcm!! Out of the 25 homes, not even one was close to being covered. How many children need to grow up under housing insecurity until something is done? This is even more outrageous since, according to a Glasgow Times investigation, families could be waiting more than 100 years to get a social rented home with three or more bedrooms.   When you are scared of losing your home, your landlord holds an immense amount of power over you. Through endless rent increases and threats of eviction, they claim entitlement over any money you may have: your grocery budget, your heating bill, your Disability expenses. And with no rent controls they are given free reign to take it all: not only at the expense of local services, but at the expense of your survival too. To help mitigate the impact of benefit cuts like the bedroom tax and benefit cap, the Scottish Government allocated £90.5 million to local authorities for Discretionary Housing Payments for 2025-2026. Each council decides who gets awarded this payment and for how long. It is unclear in the published statistics how much of these funds are going into the pockets of private landlords who, with rent caps now being lifted, continue to increase rents.   This information leaves us with more questions than answers about the future of affordable housing in our city. If landlords can charge however much they like, where does it stop? We already know that the UK government is expected to subsidise private landlords by over £70 billion in total from 2024 to 2029. There is no question that those of us who can’t afford our rent deserve financial support, but giving landlords more money is doing nothing to tackle the housing emergency in the long term. Those who see housing as an investment are not going to suddenly hold themselves accountable for the suffering they’re causing. If we want things to stop getting worse, we’re going to need effective rent controls that are not watered down to appease landlords and investors. Click here to endorse our demands for the long overdue rent controls that tenants across Scotland desperately need!     gov.scot gov.uk zoopla.co.uk https://scotland.shelter.org.uk/housing_advice/money_help/discretionary_housing_payment https://neweconomics.org/2024/01/government-subsidising-private-landlords-70bn-over-next-five-years https://www.glasgowtimes.co.uk/news/25109637.families-stuck-housing-list-100-years/

Dundee Tenants Turn Up the Heat with ‘Unfair Funfair’ Protest for Rent Controls

On 12 May, Dundee’s City Square was buzzing as Living Rent Dundee rolled out our ‘Unfair Funfair’ outside Dundee City Council, calling loud and clear for rent controls. Continue reading

Living Rent launch open letter calling for Glasgow City Council to invest in housing and services using funds from tourist tax

Today, we delivered an open letter calling for Glasgow City Council to invest in housing, infrastructure and public services using money from their proposed tourist tax.   Read our letter in full below:   Dear Susan Aitken,    We, the undersigned, support the introduction of a visitor levy in Glasgow and call on Glasgow City Council to ensure that the revenues the tax could generate benefit the residents and workers of our city.  Latest figures show that visitors spent £2.35 billion in Glasgow in 2023, almost 50% more than in 2022. At the same time, 36,000 people are on social housing waiting lists and 7,266 people are in temporary accommodation, including 2,765 children.  We believe that there are four key areas where the money generated by the visitor levy should go.  First, on housing. Glasgow council recently declared a housing emergency - we believe that you should be using any new source of revenue to help tackle the housing crisis in our city, not to reinvest the money generated from the tax back into tourism. Second, on public services. In the past decade and particularly since the pandemic, community centres, sports facilities and libraries across Glasgow have been closed permanently or indefinitely. New revenue should be used to support our crumbling public services. Thirdly, on waste management. Years of cuts to waste collection services has led to Glasgow being labelled one of the filthiest cities in the world. Both workers and residents are deeply affected by this waste crisis resulting in massive rat infestation as rats are jumping out of bins or even appearing in toilet pans.  And lastly, on infrastructure, specifically, addressing the pothole crisis. Glasgow gained a reputation as the ‘pothole capital’ of Britain with potholes claims rocketing in the last few years. This revenue could be a helpful opportunity to inject new money into crucial road infrastructure. Tourists are welcome in our city, but businesses like Airbnb do not need an injection of public funds - they are already raking in massive profits.  We are demanding: The tourist tax to be set at 8.5% The council to use the funds raised to Invest in our public services & infrastructure Build more social housing   This open letter has been set up by Living Rent Glasgow, Tenants’ and Community Union and signed by the following:   Bryan Simpson, Lead Organiser, Unite Hospitality Chris Mitchell, GMB Stuart Graham, Unison Glasgow City Branch Social Work Convener and Environmental Officer Gordon Martin, Regional Organiser, RMT Tom Queen, Branch Organiser, Unite University of Glasgow Branch Sophie Watson, Branch Chair, UNISON University of Glasgow and Glasgow School of Art Tom Napper, Kinning Park Community Council David MacIver, Community Manager West, Shelter Scotland Selina Hales, Refuweegee Tressa Burke, Chief Executive Officer, Glasgow Disability Alliance Maria Carvalho, Climate & Health Campaign & Programme Lead, Medact Pinar Aksu, Maryhill Integration Network

Living Rent launch open letter calling for rent controls in Dundee

Today, we delivered an open letter calling for Dundee City Council to commit to implementing rent controls when the Housing Bill comes into law.   Read our letter in full below:   Dear Councillors,   We, the undersigned, are writing to urge you to prioritise the needs of renters in your constituencies and commit to introducing rent controls after the Housing Bill has passed through Parliament.  Dundee has the fastest increasing rents in Scotland. Over the past decade, housing costs in Dundee have increased much faster than wages, making rent unaffordable for many. Rent for a one bed flat in Dundee rose 10% in the last year alone, after rising 16.9% the previous year. Since 2010 rent has increased by 75.2%, over 25% above inflation. Unaffordable rents are a major driver of poverty, especially as rents are increasing much faster than wages. With the government abolishing the last of the emergency protections for tenants, this is only going to get worse as tenants are hit by a wave of unaffordable rent increases. Housing costs are the largest financial outgoing in most households and 12.5% of Dundee renters are spending over half of their pay on rent. Nearly a third of children in Dundee live in poverty. Worryingly, housing costs disproportionately impact those from minority ethnic groups, women and LGBTQ+ people, making high rents a driving factor of inequality in our city. The price of rent has also had a massive effect on homelessness in Dundee. Between 2023 and 2024, there were 1,106 applications assessed as homeless or threatened with homelessness, with 456 households, including 262 children, in temporary accommodation. One of the common causes of homelessness is the inability to meet rent. We know that rising homelessness puts local authorities under a huge amount of pressure: rent controls would help ease this pressure and allow more people to stay in their homes. By committing to rent controls, this council will show what a progressive response to the housing crisis looks like and ensure that tenants are able to remain in the neighbourhoods and communities they call home. Without a commitment to rent controls, we fear that landlords will continue to put up rents, and Dundee will soon become as expensive as Edinburgh and Glasgow have been allowed to become. Edinburgh City Council has already backed rent controls - you have a responsibility to your constituents to do the same.  We, the community - tenants, workers, community groups and leaders - believe the people of Dundee should be able to afford homes. We therefore ask that you listen to the voice of Dundee residents and pass a motion in support of rent controls. We look forward to your response.   Yours sincerely,   Maggie Chapman, MSP for North East Scotland Mike Arnott, Secretary, Dundee Trade Union Council Bob MacGregor, Regional Officer, Unite the Union Rory Steel, GMB Scotland Jim McFarlane, Dundee City UNISON Tánaiste Custance, President Elect, Dundee University Students’ Association David Simpson, Unite retired members branch Colin Clement, Stobswell Forum Dr Cian McMahon, Lecturer in Economics & Management Gail Stirling, West End Community Council Iain Daniels, Energy and Benefits Advisor, Citizens Advice Bureau Kate Maher, Elaine Maher, and Sam Cook, ScrapAntics Laura Stevenson, Cake or Dice Community Cafe Sheena Wellington, City Centre and Harbour Community Council Thomas Coutts, Tesco and Dundee United Community Trust Yvette Hoskins, Dundee RAAC Campaign Group Dundee International Women’s Centre Dundee Pensioners’ Forum Fans Supporting Foodbanks Dundee Speak Oot Living Rent Dundee

Living Rent launch open letter calling for Highland visitor levy to support housing crisis

Today, we delivered an open letter calling for Highland Council to implement a visitor levy that sees funds go towards the housing crisis. Read our letter in full below: Continue reading

Living Rent report on challenging rent increases

We have launched a report that includes analysis of rent increase decisions between April 2024 and February 2025 as well as a survey of private tenants conducted between January and February 2025. Together they provide a picture of people' experiences of rent increases in Scotland over the last year and their fears for the year ahead. Continue reading

Nearly half of tenants in joint tenancies have had a joint tenancy rent increase our survey finds

Today we released a report that finds that three quarters of tenants have been in a joint tenancy agreement. And of those three quarters, nearly half (48.8%) of them have had a rent increase when a flatmate moved out - a so-called joint tenancy increase.  Continue reading

Living Rent Edinburgh 2024 Wrapped 💫🏘️

Living Rent Edinburgh has had huge successes this year, let's see this year in review.    Continue reading