Rent hikes make a mockery of SNP-Scottish Green promises for tenants

Matt Dobson

As a Glasgow tenant of West of Scotland Housing Association, I received a letter at the end of January proposing to increase my rent by 5.9% from April, despite the cost of living crisis.

West of Scotland HA say they “understand it’s a difficult time for everyone”. But they are “pleased” that the Scottish government has decided not to “impose a rent freeze” on social landlords beyond March 2023. 

Despite major building projects in Glasgow and beyond, and their directors receiving large salaries, West of Scotland HA say that unless this increase takes place they risk insolvency. They also claim that planned investment, including refurbishments for tenants, will halt. 

They further claim agreement from the unelected Tenant Advisory Group for the rent rise. Normally a tenant survey is sent out, but now this has been delayed as the HA waited for government’s decision to allow HA’s to increase rents. Tenants are simply asked to email the Directors with an opinion.

So much for the SNP – Scottish Green “rent freeze and eviction ban” that was announced in October 2022 as part of their programme for government! Their claims that any element of this is being extended until September 2023 are hollow.

The October 2022 rent freeze only actually covered a small number of private sector tenants, even there landlords had many loopholes they could exploit! 

Every HA and council tenant knows that rents are set annually in April. So, announcing a freeze after increases in April 2022 (as tenants we got a 5% three-year cumulative increase over the Covid period by West of Scotland HA) until the end of March 2023 made no impact on tenants of social landlords, despite a frenzy of PR spin from the SNP and the Greens. 

Now even this limited freeze and eviction ban has been lifted. Social landlords in Scotland can now hike rents by up to 11.1% (the claimed inflation level by the Scottish government).

Even the Tories are suggesting capping social landlord rises at a lower rate. Scottish councils have agreed a £5 a week increase, which is still a large increase.

In the private sector rent rises are now capped at 3% but landlords can apply to hike rents to 6% under certain circumstances.

Some social housing providers – mainly the bigger ones – have said they will limit increases to 6%, but this agreement is not binding. 

Queen’s Cross HA and Maryhill HA in North Glasgow are proposing increases of 7-9%. 

SNP First Minister Nicola Sturgeon claimed the September 2022 freeze was in response to a “humanitarian emergency”. But the eviction ban does not apply to social housing tenants with arrears of more than £2,250. 

The average tenant rent arrears in Scotland are running at over £4,000, according to the Herald newspaper. 6.3% of the rent due to Scottish HA’s for 2022 is in arrears.

Hundreds of thousands of tenants will now be even more vulnerable to fuel poverty and eviction as energy bills also rocket in April.

Housing Benefit is to increase in line with the September 2022 level of inflation. But many tenants are not eligible to claim if they are working. Such large rent increases will wipe out pay increases that have been awarded (often after strikes).

Those solely on housing benefit also missed out on recent cost of living payments that had a narrow criteria. Many tenant claimants are also dependent on discretionary housing benefit which is decided on a limited time period by local councils who are making severe cuts. 

Scottish Green leader Patrick Harvie, the mis-named minister for “Tenants Rights”, has parroted the arguments of the social and private landlords about money from tenants being needed for investment and that they are under financial pressure. 

The “progressive” veneer of the SNP/ Green government’s limited housing policies are utterly failing to solve Scotland’s housing crisis. 47,000 people are recorded homeless and 330,000 are on social housing waiting lists, 100,000 of which are children. 

The latest Holyrood budget, containing the biggest cuts since devolution, cut the housing element by £170 million. Since 2017 160 homeless people have died on the streets or temporary accommodation in Glasgow alone.

The housing crisis is linked to the inequality-ridden, profit-driven system of capitalism which the Tories, SNP, Labour and Greens are all intent on managing. 

Neither the Scottish government or councils are standing up to private and social landlords. Fundamentally you cannot control what you don’t own. 

Socialist Party Scotland goes further than groups like Living Rent who, while doing some good campaigning work, were not critical enough of the fig leaf of the 2022 rent freeze, and are merely calling for increased rent controls and the building of more “social housing” by the Scottish government.

Decades of council cuts, the selling off of council houses under Thatcher and then the stock transfer of all council housing to Housing Associations, completed by 2003 under a New Labour Glasgow council – which our forerunners in Scottish Militant Labour fought against – is a root cause of the city’s housing crisis. 

Similar attempts were made across Scotland by councils desperate to dump responsibility for council housing. Some of these were defeated by tenant-led campaigns.

Housing Association tenants have no real power over the decisions of HAs, which have no democratic structures and are run on a corporate basis.

Witness the current occupation of a group of Maryhill/ Wyndford tenants of high flats in that area who the local HA are pulling down despite housing shortages and their potential value with refurbishments.

socialist policies needed

We fight for socialist policies to solve the housing crisis. This would include a mass public works council housing building programme that would also include renovation and the compulsory purchase of empty properties. 

This programme could also include green energy saving retrofitting and provide skilled jobs. A fighting socialist council and government in Holyrood could set needs budgets, refusing to implement Tory cuts, as the socialist Liverpool council did in the 1980s with its famous council house building program. 

A mass campaign of the trade unions and tenants would also demand back the billions stolen in Tory austerity.

We demand a immediate rent freeze and a suspension of evictions for rent arrears while the cost of living crisis continues. 

Rents should be controlled by elected committees based on mass participation of tenants organisations and the trade unions. 

We say open the books of Housing Associations to tenant and trade union scrutiny to allow for reallocating funds to finance rent freezes.

Those that are not financially viable should be taken back under council and tenant control immediately with compensation only paid on the basis of proven need. 

Social housing should be returned to the control of elected councils

Such a housing policy would be connected to a socialist transformation of society, with the nationalisation under working- class control of the banks, construction companies and wider industry. 

Housing allocation and building could be worked out in a sustainable way involving the majority of society.

To fight for these objectives tenants need to be organised in democratic unions or associations that fight alongside the trade union movement in the growing strike wave and a new mass working class party.