News

Jan 13, 2024

What happened during Scotland’s rent freeze? Landlords fought back

Now the freeze is being replaced with a cap. For solutions to the housing crisis

Now the freeze is being replaced with a cap. For solutions to the housing crisis to work, they need to be permanent

Dundee, the sometimes troubled, often picturesque city on Scotland's east coast, has generally carried a reputation for affordability. Even in the city's plush west end, it wasn't unusual during the 2010s for two people on fairly modest wages to be able to split the rent on a two-bedroom flat in a handsome, enduringly solid Victorian tenement.

This is no longer the case. At the start of the month, new figures showed that rents had soared 33% in a year, putting the city behind only Sunderland as having the steepest increase in the UK, with the average monthly cost of a room in Dundee now £587.

This was not the plan in September 2022, when Nicola Sturgeon announced a six-month rent freeze and an eviction ban, as part of emergency legislation brought in to deal with the cost of living crisis. To renters in, say, England, even such muted radicalism sounds unimaginable. It has indeed meant – however temporarily – an added degree of security for Scottish renters during a period of immense economic strain, as well as being a proactive attempt to tackle the issues head-on.

The small print, though, to the Cost of Living (Protection of Tenants) (Scotland) Act 2022 contained important caveats. For one, the freeze would only apply to existing tenancies across Scotland – there was no cap on what could be charged for a flat put on the market. Social tenants with arrears of more than £2,250 could still be evicted. And a temporary freeze was assuredly not the same thing as long-term rent controls in a nation that, like the rest of the UK, has a wildly overheated rental market.

For many Scottish housing campaigners – and indeed everyday tenants – the news was welcomed with enthusiasm, along with the sense that more could be done. It was reported last year that average rents had increased above inflation in seven Scottish areas before the freeze came in. It's fair to question the effectiveness of a freeze that simply locks in what are, for many, already unaffordable rents. This is in a country where about 37% of households live in rented accommodation.

Demand has long been an issue, at 2.5 times the UK average (one Edinburgh estate agent recently spoke in the trade press of two newly listed flats receiving more than a thousand inquiries each in 48 hours). And just like the rest of the UK, the last decade and more has seen the cost of Scottish social and private rental accommodation go in one direction: up.

How long can it be sustainable, for instance, to live in Glasgow when the average rent of a one-bedroom flat has jumped 48.3% between 2010 and 2022? Several people I spoke to in Dundee described the situation as a bad joke: stagnant wages, chronic uncertainty, the looming threat of having to move from an already unaffordable rent to an impossible one. The consensus is that while the freeze was sorely needed, it wasn't enough alone. This is a view echoed by Matt Downie, the chief executive of the homelessness charity Crisis UK. Though it welcomed the Scottish government's decision to take action to protect tenants, "the rent freeze contained in the emergency legislation represents a sticking plaster on a much bigger problem", says Downie.

Leòdhas Massie, a Green councillor based in Glasgow's southside, who could barely afford to live in the constituency he was elected to represent, told the Daily Record in September that the measures just weren't enough. He summed up his party's more radical ambitions by describing the freeze as a good opportunity to implement lasting, legally viable rent controls.

But, of course, there's been opposition – from Scotland's landlord lobbies. Their argument was that the freeze was unfair on those in their ranks struggling with the cost of living crisis themselves. They also warned of a potential landlord exodus, further increasing demand issues. But for all the "good landlords" out there who don't price-gouge and who maintain their properties well, there are many tenants for whom these arguments won't evoke sympathy: in 2019, the Scottish house conditions survey showed that 52% of privately rented homes in Scotland were found to be in a state of disrepair.

In late January, the Scottish housing minister and Green party co-leader Patrick Harvie announced that the legislation would be extended for at least a further six months, from April to the end of September. Only now, the private-sector freeze would be scrapped and replaced with a 3% cap (the freeze on social rents will also end in April, with the voluntary agreement that landlords keep any increases to below inflationary levels of 11.1%). Despite this fairly bold U-turn, broadly interpreted as a concession to the landlord lobby, there is still an extreme unhappiness among landlords. Reports have circulated about an upcoming judicial challenge to the extension of the bill.

The political situation remains delicate, and few begrudge even the flawed efforts of the Scottish government to get a grip on its housing crisis. But there is room for more sustainable action to combat a deeply entrenched problem that has been allowed to fester over the last decade and more. Campaigners across the country have viable long-term controls, sustained housebuilding and urgently needed retrofitting on their minds. Who knows, further action may even inspire legislators elsewhere in the UK, where the housing crisis remains as dire as ever.

At the end of my trip in Dundee I spoke to a friend who was thinking about moving when his tenancy expired later in the year. He’d been used to paying a reasonable enough rent – about £500 a month – for the duration of the years in his current flat. Rightmove, he told me with a sigh, wasn't showing much in the same area for anything under double that.

Francisco Garcia is a journalist. We All Go Into The Dark: The Hunt for Bible John is published in April