Scottish Greens push for rent controls despite evidence they don’t work

Scottish Greens push for rent controls despite evidence they don’t work

0:01 AM, 27th March 2025, About 2 months ago 1

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The Scottish Greens claim that 82% of people in Scotland support rent controls, as they try to prevent the removal of the temporary rent cap.

From 1 April, the rent adjudication scheme, which allowed tenants to challenge excessive rent hikes and capped increases at 12% if they appealed to a rent officer, will be scrapped.

The Scottish Greens also argue “the landlord lobby can not be trusted to look after renters.”

Rogue landlords all over Scotland waiting to cash-in

Scottish Green MSP Maggie Chapman claims the Scottish government must act to stop the housing emergency and introduce rent controls.

She said: “With living costs soaring, a lot of renters will be watching their bills stacking up and worrying about the future. Meanwhile, there will be rogue landlords all over Scotland eagerly waiting to cash-in from the minute that these protections are lifted.

“Time and again the landlord lobby has shown that it can’t be trusted to look out for the best interest of renters, and I don’t want to see the communities I represent left at the mercy of a broken housing market.

“Unless the Scottish Government acts now, households and families will be plunged into totally avoidable poverty. Do they really want to do that on top of all the cuts that Labour is implementing from Westminster?”

Rent controls do more harm than good

The Scottish Greens have now launched a campaign to save rent controls and urge the Scottish government to implement a national system of rent controls before 2026.

The Scottish Greens claim evidence suggests rent controls work across Europe.

However, the Scottish Greens fail to mention rent controls do more harm than good and actually do far more damage than benefit tenants.

According to the Institute of Economic Affairs (IEA), while rent controls may initially lower rents for existing tenants, they typically lead to higher rents in uncontrolled sectors and reduce housing supply and quality.

Even in Scotland, the rent cap has been blamed for soaring rents, which have increased by 11.6%.


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Morag

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11:16 AM, 27th March 2025, About 2 months ago

In Scotland, I never felt the need to increase rents during tenancies. Indeed, even between tenancies, there was rarely the opportunity to increase as market rents remained fairly stable from when we started in 2005 until maybe 2015 or so. Even after the various regulatory changes that started becoming burdensome from about 2009, we just sucked it up. Section 24 in 2017 probably made a slow start on increasing rents for some, once the penny started to drop, but for us it didn't have much impact. Only once the post Covid rent controls came into play, did I notice a sharp rise in advertised rents. That's when I realised that my rents were now 60% of market rate. I wouldn't even have minded that so much, but the threat that I may not be allowed to increase even if my good longterm tenants left, made me feel I'd better start introducing annual increases. So that's what I've done the last two years. Not only that, but since about 2018, I started selling up as tenants left, and now have only one of formerly ten properties left. I'd like to be rid of that too, as it barely breaks even, but the tenants are nice people and not showing any signs of wanting to go, so I'll carry on meantime with my annual rent rises and keep encouraging them to buy it from us. The tragedy is, I often feel guilty that I could be doing something to help provide much needed rental homes for people, but I have to keep reminding myself that the risks are now too great.

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