Here in the UK, you could be forgiven for thinking that proposals for rent controls were a fringe, far-left idea. But zoom out just a little, and almost every other country in Europe has some kind of regulation over what landlords can charge. We had them here too, for the best part of 80 years, until the Thatcher government scrapped them in the 1980s. Far from being a radical, outlandish notion, rent controls are a common-sense norm.
In Scotland, the tenants’ union Living Rent has been campaigning for the past eight years for the reintroduction of rent controls. In that time, the need for them has been reinforced by events across the board.
Rents have continued to spiral out of control while wages stagnate. Coronavirus lockdowns exposed the extreme disparity in living conditions – from the cosy, spacious homes of well-to-do, upper middle-class people, with gardens to relax in and spare bedrooms to work in, to the cramped, damp, cold flats that tenants were trapped in for months. The cost-of-living crisis and rampant inflation have left tenants, already on the brink, facing economic disaster. And ordinary people see the crisis around them clearly – which is why poll after poll has shown overwhelming and growing support for rent controls, right across Scottish society – including a clear majority of home owners.
This is the context in which the Scottish government has, finally, conceded to tenants’ demands for rent controls. But the devil is going to be in the details.
Reactionary forces
While opponents of rent controls have seen the writing on the wall, they are now doing everything they can to make sure that any new measures are as toothless as possible – and to delay their introduction for as long as possible, giving them the chance to hike up rents before any limit is implemented. An array of landlords, letting agents and self-described ‘sector experts’ are mobilising to prevent any meaningful challenge to their profits.
They claim there’s no problem, while tenants are driven deeper and deeper into poverty. They claim there isn’t the necessary data, while calls from tenants’ organisations for better data collection have gone ignored for a decade. They claim it would be wrong for the government to intervene in the housing market, while gladly accepting billions in public money for unaffordable rents in the form of housing benefit and other forms of subsidies.
We are not interested in timid reforms that curb only the worst excesses of the sector – we need fundamental, permanent change
Scotland’s tenants’ union is fighting back – doing the hard work of organising to counter the voices of landlords and right-wing think tanks, and build working-class, tenant power to win not just rent controls but a fundamental, radical transformation in housing. In response to the Scottish government’s consultation, Living Rent members have been organising on doorsteps and campuses, at rallies and events, on street stalls and in unions, to give the government no choice. The demand is a radical model of rent controls that, if we win, will force down rents and force up quality.
This is no third-sector lobby effort. By its relentless focus on developing leaders in Scotland’s working-class communities, Living Rent is building confident, assertive local groups in every corner of the country.
Power, not influence
At times, the campaign has sacrificed the polished public affairs professionalism of the big NGOs. But that’s because our goal isn’t influence, it’s power. We will win rent controls not by appealing to the goodwill of those in power, but by leaving them no alternative.
This is why Living Rent, in common with a new wave of tenant movement radicalism sweeping Europe, is structured as a union, not as an ad hoc campaigning group. There is an understanding that it will require a kind of movement infrastructure not just to win any one specific demand but to protect what we win and, crucially, go further.
When we win, it won’t be because of the strength of our arguments – although of course we are confident in them – but because we have built genuine, working-class, tenant power.
We know that it will require a movement to see through these changes, and all the other changes Scotland’s housing sector needs next. We are not interested in timid reforms that curb only the worst excesses of the sector – we need fundamental, permanent change. Rent controls are the beginning, but the goal is a system that sees all housing as the crucial public service it is, not an asset for speculators to exploit and gamble on.
When rent controls were first introduced in the UK in 1915, it wasn’t the result of a glossy report. Rather, an unstoppable wave of tenants on rent strike terrified the government into action. This secured not just rent controls but began in earnest a wave of council house building that saw millions of publicly-owned homes built. The tenants’ movements’ demands – and revolutionary anger – are no less ambitious today.
