Rent Is Out Of Control

it’s tenants who are suffering rising rents to live in poor quality homes. A rent control is only a rent control if it actually controls rents. However, like the rent freeze before this proposal, these controls are only part of the answer. A Scotland that is serious about a “wellbeing economy” would be seriously thinking about housing as a human right to be met, not as an asset to be inflated and profited from. We wouldn’t be seeing announcements of Government borrowing to give as a bung to the private housing sector to build “affordable” homes, we’d see that funding being made available to Local Authorities to build social housing that they can rent out to pay back the loans. If they do it right, they can provide social homes in a quality and quantity and at a price that actively de-levers the private rented sector (why spend hundreds of pounds more per month for a mouldy, draughty flat owned by….someone you can’t even track down, when you could have a Council House built to PassivHaus quality for less?). Such social housing shouldn’t be the “housing of last resort” that Thatcher turned them into but should be the first and active choice for many looking for somewhere to live. That’s when I’ll know that housing will have a chance of not just pandering to private developers and landlords but puts All of Us First.