A lack of confidence: why Scottish tenants need rent controls too.
On Monday 21st of June, opposition parties in Sweden’s Riksdag met in central Stockholm and agreed to back a notion of no-confidence in Social Democrat Prime Minister Stefan Löfven. The vote forces Löfven to decide between calling a snap election or resigning from his post. The historic vote was not triggered by any personal scandal with the Social Democrat Party or Löfven himself, but due to the fragile coalition government’s refusal to withdraw legislation that would remove rent controls on new housing. https://www.independent.ie/business/world/berlinrent-freeze-tenants-left-out-in-the-coldafter-ruling-by-germancourt-40322207.html (Getty Images)
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Recruitment: Living Rent is recruiting an Edinburgh organiser
Living Rent is hiring!
Join our expanding team of organisers in Edinburgh to fight for housing that works for people, support local branches to organise and win! This is a fixed 12 months full time contract at Living Wage.
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Eviction Crisis: Living Rent's Demands
As restrictions ease across Scotland, Living Rent are deeply concerned about a wave of evictions due to rent arrears built-up during the pandemic. Although the eviction ban was a welcome policy to protect renters, without additional protections for tenants the ban alone is insufficient and as a result renters have still been evicted through-out the pandemic. The Scottish Government must act now to not only rigidly protect renters from eviction, but from the conditions that threaten them with eviction in the first place.
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Four years on: justice for Grenfell
Today marks four years since the country watched in horror as Grenfell Tower burned live on the news. Living Rent again expresses its full solidarity with the bereaved, survivors and the wider community of Grenfell Tower and their ongoing search for justice.
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Summer Training Schedule
Living Rent’s training program: Fighting for the future
In 2020, Living Rent doubled in size with neighbourhood branches organising across Edinburgh and Glasgow and groups forming across Scotland. The year 2021 presents us with great challenges, notably the combined impact of Brexit and the Covid pandemic on our communities, as well as significant opportunities to fight for the future we deserve and need. Supported by the Rosa Luxemburg Foundation, Living Rent is organising training to support tenants and residents to hone their skills and understandings, in order to best seize these opportunities.
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Housing and the Cabinet Reshuffle
In the Scottish Government’s reshuffle announced earlier this week, a new Cabinet Secretary for Social Justice, Housing and Local Government was appointed. Living Rent welcomes Shona Robison and bids farewell to Kevin Stewart. We take a look at the last Housing Minister’s last year and the challenge ahead.
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Recruitment: Living Rent is recruiting a remote organiser
Passionate about memberrun organisations? Living Rent is looking for a remote organiser to support its growing membership across Scotland. This position will join and support a growing team of organisers in Scotland with the aim to establish and strengthen branches outwith the areas where there are full-time neighbourhood organisers.
This is a fixed 12 months full time contract at Living Wage.
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GHA tenants organise against rent hike!
On Thursday 25th March, Living Rent members went to the Wheatley Group fancy offices in the city centre with a clear message to Glasgow Housing Association: FREEZE RENTS NOW!
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Airbnb's "community organising"
New research published at the University of Manchester with Ethical Consumer magazine explores how ‘astroturf’ movements of landlords have been set up all over the world to fend off threats to Airbnb’s business model. The company hired hundreds of "community organisers" since 2014 to set up over 400 ‘Home Sharing Clubs’ in cities all over the world, including in the UK. You can read this important report here, as it outlines how companies use so-called grassroots movements to pursue back room deals and undermine our movement and demands for a city that puts residents and tenants first.
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Freeze rents: Hearing back from Dunedin and Canmore tenants
Like the earth rotates on its axis, and tupperware loses its lid, our rents increase year on year. Rent rises seem like a law of nature. But they aren’t. The system that makes people pay a large proportion of their income to rent is made and maintained by people and organisations that could, and should, act differently. Particularly in a pandemic, which has churned up lives and livelihoods like a long, savage, yet monotonous, storm. We need rent freezes in social and public housing.
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