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A New Deal for Tenants: Rents Down, Rights Up!

  • Scotland’s tenants need homes we can afford, so that we’re not priced out of our communities.
  • We need security of tenure, not just a place we can stay for a while.
  • We need homes that are warm, so that heating them doesn’t cost the earth.
  • We need access to justice and better enforcement, so that we can defend ourselves when landlords treat us unfairly. 

The Scottish Government has promised to introduce rent controls and greater rights for tenants in this Parliament.
Between December 2021 and April 2022, the Scottish Government consulted on proposed changes to the law.

As Scotland's tenants union, we demanded:

  • AFFORDABLE HOMES: a point-based system of rent controls to bring down housing costs and improve housing quality and a greater supply of social housing

  • QUALITY HOMES: greater and clearer penalties for landlords who refuse to make repairs, as well as clearer incentives for improvements such as energy efficiency

  • SECURE HOMES: greater protections for tenants, including banning winter evictions, making all grounds discretionary and introducing meaningful penalties for breaches of the law

  • HOMES THAT ARE OURS: the right to make it ours by not facing undue restrictions on what we can do, such as having pets or redecorating

  • STRONGER VOICES FOR TENANTS: control over our homes, which means making rent consultation results binding, and ensuring we don’t face repercussions for exercising our rights

Get in touch if you want to get involved locally and push for change. 

6,152 endorsements
5,000 endorsements

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3379

  • Riyoko Shibe
    endorsed 2022-04-12 11:45:49 +0100
  • Yifan Cheng
    endorsed 2022-04-12 11:37:52 +0100
  • Becci Millan
    endorsed 2022-04-12 11:33:45 +0100
  • Eliška Suchochlebová
    endorsed 2022-04-12 11:31:05 +0100
  • Lauren Douglas
    endorsed 2022-04-12 11:27:19 +0100
  • Evelyn Dom
    endorsed 2022-04-12 11:26:29 +0100
  • Derry Wyllie
    endorsed 2022-04-12 11:24:54 +0100
  • Bobby Jewell
    endorsed 2022-04-12 11:24:49 +0100
  • Natalia Barbour
    endorsed 2022-04-12 11:24:46 +0100
  • Finn Ball
    endorsed 2022-04-12 11:21:53 +0100
  • Jakub Szwedowicz
    endorsed 2022-04-12 11:21:09 +0100
    Rent controls and shifting the burden of proof onto landlords in disputes
  • Connor Kirk
    endorsed 2022-04-12 11:20:12 +0100
  • Kaitlin Ross
    endorsed 2022-04-12 11:17:24 +0100
  • Yvonne Hunter
    endorsed via 2022-04-12 11:14:47 +0100
    I’m a tenant and find it outrageous that whilst I am deemed unable to afford a mortgage on a I bed flat I pay a mortgage on a 3 bedroomed house for my landlord! £1350 a month is equivalent to 350000 mortgage!
  • Emily McIntosh
    endorsed via 2022-04-12 11:11:08 +0100
    Every demand being made is an essential to happy healthy living, no one should have unaffordable, insecure homes with terms and conditions or restrictions! And all homes should be of a livable quality and in Glasgow standards are shockingly low when prices are ridiculously high!!!

    Change needs to happen now!
  • Matt Titley
    endorsed 2022-04-12 10:55:15 +0100
  • Shona McKay
    endorsed 2022-04-12 10:51:16 +0100
  • Andrea Balzarini
    endorsed 2022-04-12 10:47:44 +0100
  • Catriona Mulholland
    endorsed 2022-04-12 10:45:35 +0100
    Pets and decorating rights
  • kerr mckay
    endorsed 2022-04-12 10:41:49 +0100
    rent caps. as well as in-depth, accessible public housing programs
  • Patrick Vivian
    endorsed 2022-04-12 10:39:14 +0100
  • Holly Napier
    endorsed 2022-04-12 10:36:22 +0100
    Affordability and availability (too many Air BnBs!), as well as quality, people need to live in safe spaces!
  • Anna MacDonald
    endorsed 2022-04-12 10:35:56 +0100
    Fair rent prices and rights for tenants
  • Carola Fernández
    endorsed 2022-04-12 10:34:33 +0100
    Bringing rents down
  • Aaron Paterson
    endorsed 2022-04-12 10:32:57 +0100
    To prevent the gentrification and ensure everyone has a right to live within their means and in their own terms.
  • Jai Morrison
    endorsed 2022-04-12 10:32:20 +0100
  • Grant Duguid
    endorsed 2022-04-12 10:13:16 +0100
    To make homes affordable, and livable. I recently moved out of sub-standard accommodation that I’d chased my landlord (Dunecht Estates) for 6 years to bring up to standard, there’s only so much you can take. If they’d done what was needed (not a lot) I’d probably have lived there to my dying day, it weas where I was brought up, I was “home”. But nope, greed before need
  • Becky Sik
    endorsed 2022-04-12 10:10:14 +0100
  • Polly Selkirk
    endorsed 2022-04-12 10:03:03 +0100
  • Katharina Bandmann
    endorsed 2022-04-12 09:59:33 +0100
    i live here