Private tenants in Scotland are facing huge rent hikes and potentially eviction as emergency protections are soon to expire, campaigners are warning.
Living Rent’s national campaigns chair Ruth Gilbert says the Scottish government has “in effect rubber-stamped rent increases from April”.
Ms Gilbert, who is a top official at the Scotland-wide tenants’ union, added that transitional measures are not fit for purpose and are confusing. The result, it is claimed, is that renters don’t know what their rights are.
In September 2022, a 3 percent cap on in-tenancy rent increases was introduced as well as protections against evictions.
The legislation was brought forward by the Scottish Greens, the SNP’s governing partners, as a temporary measure and comes to an end on 31 March.
Living Rent has claimed that some tenants in Scotland have already been issued with notices telling them that their rent is set to be hiked between 30 and 60 percent.
The Guardian reported that Ms Gilbert said: “We’re also worried that the scale of evictions, because if you can’t afford your rent hike then that is an eviction whether you call it one or not.”
She added: “Particularly across the central belt in Glasgow and Edinburgh, people are already paying well over half their take-home pay on rent.”
The Scottish Government is bringing forward new legislation which will see long-term rent control and rights for tenants. This is expected to be debated in the summer.
In the meantime, to bridge the gap between then and the end of the emergency legislation, the Scottish Government proposed changes to rent adjudication. This means that tenants could try and dispute their rent increase.
However, despite these measures aimed at curbing rent increases, Ms Gilbert believes some kind of retrospective means of reducing rents must be brought forward.
She explained: “Over the last decade, we’ve had rents spiral out of control. Rents increased 80 percent in a decade in Glasgow.
“Those figures are astronomical and if rents are genuinely going to become affordable there needs to be a mechanism to reverse this. That’s our vision.”
