An open letter to Shelter Scotland

I never new there was a Shelter Scotland!
Gordon, how many people have Shelter Scotland housed ?
Will Shelter Scotland engage in practical arrangements to assist landlords?
E.G. Pay landlords rent insurance for the first year of any Tenancy if that landlord houses a”problem” tenant that any landlord would never consider housing for various reasons.

If this is an ideological battle rather than an economic one, no amount of economic reasoning will gain traction. Politicians and spokespersons will simply obfuscate.

The only way ideological battles are resolved is at the ballot box or through the withdrawal of services. The current government appears already to have anticipated the latter by introducing penal council tax rates and other regulations for empty properties.

Successive governments have been steadily positioning their chess pieces with the apparent aim of encouraging the PRS market to collapse in order to recreate the council estates of the future. To avoid spooking the markets—particularly mortgage lenders—they would prefer this to occur as a controlled collapse, while leaving financial and occupational risk within the private sector for as long as possible. Then, shortly before the next General Election, they can promise to buy out the residual PRS at the newly deflated prices.

That would conveniently satisfy the oft-repeated claim of delivering 1.5 million properties. Time will tell.

Reply to the comment left by Person Of The People at 15/03/2026 – 16:41
Funny, I interpreted 1.5 million properties to mean 1.5 million NEW properties.

Reply to the comment left by The_Maluka at 15/03/2026 – 18:36
… and you don’t think politicians will morph that into 1.5 million new public sector properties. It can easily be coupled with outright council house type security and rent controls which will be a massive vote winner, even if economically illiterate, so any attempt to hold them strictly to account will be lost in translation and dismissed as churlish.

It is only a rerun of the 70s and 80s before the Housing Act 1988 brought in ASTs. The Housing Act 1988 is already largely dismantled and ASTs as they were intended to rebuild the PRS no longer exist.

The so-called charity called Shelter should be forced by this government to start housing tenants or start being guarantors for people who cannot afford the rent. After ruining the rental market with their smears and toxic campaigning against good landlords, they have the cheek to pay themselves massive salaries and are sitting on millions and collecting more daily. They should be barred from taking money off the public because the public is led to believe that they are housing tenants and using the money to help tenants but they are not.

Reply to the comment left by Person Of The People at 15/03/2026 – 16:41
There is a lot in what you’ve said that many landlords will recognise.

I agree that once a debate becomes framed as ideological, it becomes very difficult for economic evidence alone to gain traction. That is precisely why I am trying to keep this discussion anchored in data and real-world outcomes rather than positions or labels.

Where I would gently challenge your point is on the idea that this is purely ideological. If that were the case, we would expect different policy approaches to produce broadly similar results. In practice, what we are seeing across different parts of the UK is that policy choices are having measurable and, in some cases, unintended consequences.

For example, temporary accommodation costs have risen to around £2.8 billion per year, more than doubling in recent years, while the number of households in temporary accommodation has reached record levels.

Those are not ideological outcomes, they are fiscal and operational realities that councils are now having to manage.

The same applies to supply. If policies affecting the private rented sector are neutral, we would expect supply to remain stable or increase. If supply is reducing, or investment is being discouraged, that should be visible in the data and open to discussion.

That is really the purpose of this article and the wider series. Not to “win” an argument, but to ask a simpler question: What is actually happening as a result of these policies?

If we can agree on that, then the debate becomes far more constructive. It moves away from ideology and towards solutions, and that is where I think there may be more common ground than it first appears.

Reply to the comment left by Sheridan Vickers at 16/03/2026 – 12:09
Sheridan, I understand the strength of feeling behind your comment. A number of landlords will recognise that frustration, particularly after several years of policy changes that have made operating in the sector more difficult.

That said, I think it is important that we keep this discussion focused on outcomes rather than motives or individuals.

Shelter, like other campaigner groups, would argue that their role is to advocate for tenants and to influence policy. Landlords, on the other hand, are operating businesses that provide housing within the framework set by government. Both perspectives exist within the same system, whether we agree with each other or not.

Perhaps a more useful question is not whether one side is right and the other is wrong, but whether the policies being supported are actually delivering better housing outcomes.

If we look at the data, temporary accommodation numbers are at record levels, and costs to the taxpayer are rising sharply. At the same time, there are clear signs that supply within the private rented sector is under pressure. Those are the issues that affect tenants, landlords and taxpayers alike.

If organisations such as Shelter want to work more closely with landlords, as has recently been suggested, then there is an opportunity here for a more constructive conversation. One that focuses on what is working, what is not, and how policy might evolve to improve outcomes for everyone involved.

That is ultimately the purpose of raising these questions, not to apportion blame, but to encourage a more evidence-based discussion about how the housing system can function more effectively.

Reply to the comment left by Mark Alexander – Founder of Property118 at 17/03/2026 – 12:41
Charities have a dubious record, take Oxfam for example and are as much in business for themselves as landlords, the exception being is that charities have managed to convince the gullible public that they are white knights., whereas landlords make no claim.
I would suggest that Shelter, rather than assisting tenants have made it worse as well as helping destroy the housing market and landlords.
I have just spoken to an estate agent 30 minutes outside of central London who said he has not sold one property to an investment buyer in months and prices are in free fall, has a full book of landlords desperate to sell , rents are increasing daily and by May he expects rents to be even higher.

Reply to the comment left by David at 17/03/2026 – 13:15
David, thank you for your contribution. There is clearly a great deal of frustration being expressed here, and your observations about current market conditions are particularly interesting.

The point you raise about landlords exiting the market and rents rising at the same time is one that deserves careful attention. It aligns with what many are now reporting anecdotally, and it raises an important question about the relationship between supply and affordability.

Where I would take the discussion slightly further is this …

If we are seeing fewer investment purchases, more landlords looking to sell, and upward pressure on rents, then the key issue is not necessarily who is to blame, but what has changed within the system to produce those outcomes.

Housing markets tend to respond to incentives. When investment becomes less attractive or more uncertain, capital moves elsewhere. The consequence is often reduced supply, which in turn places upward pressure on rents.

That is why I have been trying to frame this debate around evidence and outcomes rather than motives. The data on temporary accommodation, rising costs to the taxpayer, and pressures on supply all point in the same direction.

The question we should be asking is whether current policy settings are helping or hindering the availability of housing.

If they are hindering it, then it is in everyone’s interest, tenants, landlords, councils and charities alike, to recognise that and adjust course accordingly.

Your point about what is happening on the ground adds an important real-world dimension to that discussion, and it would be useful to see more data emerge over the coming months to either support or challenge those observations.

Reply to the comment left by Mark Alexander – Founder of Property118 at 13/03/2026 – 17:42
Mark, thanks for leading this debate. I agree that data and insight are more likely effective than opinions and wishes.

Homelessness is not just a market with supply and demand at the point of transaction rather exists in the context of various housing needs throughout each life. The property industry is viable because the population has housing needs. That population isn’t literally regulated by government rather nudged by the two child benefits cap to understand that a replacement is preferred [2 parents, 2 children].

So demand in excess of the expected population comes from parents willingness to make more than two children for diverse reasons, probably cultural and economic. Obviously that’s a long term effect, say 20 years. So many parliamentary terms ago. However that demand is well known to government through schools and other public services. Plenty of time to build houses, you might think, so no good reason for them to be homeless.

However not all the population is home grown. Government is also responsible for immigration including economic migration that is supposed to be managed within the law and in the national interest where possible. The belief that the working population is increased by immigration very much depends on what skills are brought and what demand there is for those skills.

Having worked in industry I’ve seen the labour force contract as automation enables products untouched by human hands. The AI revolution is making further roles redundant to more automation.

So I’d question the value of immigration as automation makes people irrelevant, other than as consumers. More consumers without work doesn’t look good, certainly not economically sustainable. There is little support for any planning to build more homes, even assuming that’s economically feasible.

So it’s hard to keep to the data and insights, not opinions, with demand that is both long and short-term. Building 1.5mn homes is hard, and doesn’t look to be happening as it would need to succeed over one election cycle.

This suggests that short-term demand is where leverage exits to find a balance between supply and demand. There are no refugees in Ireland, France, Belgium, Netherlands, Denmark or Sweden for whom the UK is the closest safe refuge. Anyone who wants to claim asylum is free to visit the British Embassy for that purpose and avoid exploitation by people trafficking criminals.

Based on the data on immigration and emigration, that is a context outside the control of the property industry and so far as I can tell, outside the competency of politicians and public servants too. It’s strange that supposed Housing activists don’t engage with the demand side and levers therein..