Delivering a fair deal for tenants
Everyone deserves the safety and security of a roof over their head and a warm bed at night. Unfortunately, for many of those renting in Scotland, that is far from the reality.
A cornerstone of the Bute House Agreement - the cooperation deal which brought the Scottish Greens into the Scottish Government - is our party’s proposed New Deal for Scotland’s Tenants.
After much consultation and some emergency interim measures, the bill to put those proposals into law has now been published by our co-leader and Minister for Tenants’ Rights, Patrick Harvie.
Through this bill we will deliver a system of strong rent controls across Scotland, building on the success of the emergency rent freeze and cap delivered by the Scottish Greens at the height of the cost-of-living crisis.
This will tackle the outrageous increases in private rents, like the 35 per cent increase we’ve seen in Renfrewshire and Inverclyde since 2010.
On top of rising rents, the ever-present threat of eviction is a source of huge anxiety to many tenants. Our new law also delivers more protection from evictions.
This builds on the success of the temporary eviction protections delivered by the Scottish Greens in 2022, which have decreased tenant homelessness. Friends of mine would certainly have been made homeless without the emergency protections we delivered.
Homeowners take for granted the ability to keep pets and decorate however they want, but for many tenants this isn’t a reality either. So, we’re creating new rights for tenants to decorate and keep pets, as well as more flexibility to exit joint tenancies and a range of other improvements.
I’m proud that Greens in government are delivering these vital protections.
For too long the system has been stacked in favour of landlords and against tenants, leading to huge amounts of exploitation.
It was quite telling when some landlords and property developers accused our bill of being a ‘tenants charter’ - as if that were a bad thing!
Greens politics is all about rebalancing power in society in favour of the many, not the few. That’s exactly what this bill does.
It also includes other measures to tackle homelessness, such as by introducing new duties on public bodies to minimise its root causes.
It extends the period in which a household can be considered as ‘at risk of homelessness’ from two to six months. This will make it much easier for councils and other public sector bodies to support those households long before they reach the crisis point of imminent homelessness.
And importantly, the requirement for public authorities to act when tenants are experiencing domestic abuse will be strengthened.
All of these measures combined will ensure that some of the most vulnerable people in our society are better protected in their own homes.