Some respite for students in Scotland in its new Housing bill

The bill introduces an “ask and act” duty on social landlords and bodies, such as health boards and the police, to ask about a person’s housing situation and act to avoid them becoming homeless wherever possible.

It also reforms provision for people threatened with homelessness up to six months ahead and includes provisions for tenants experiencing domestic abuse, and outlines proposals for a “New Deal for Tenants”, a key part of the Bute House Agreement between the Scottish Government and the Scottish Green Party.

But – as we see in other parts of the UK – it all reads like (and feels like) the issues with purpose built student housing have been ignored, or are being left to the education bit of the government rather than the housing bit.

The first issue being highlighted by NUS Scotland is that the bill fails to extend tenant protections or rent controls to PBSA. NUS Scotland President Ellie Gomersall:

This loophole not only puts students at greater risk of exploitation by predatory companies but also undermines the bill’s effectiveness for all, as the wider renter population will now be more likely to have to compete with more students seeking price-controlled and better regulated private rental properties.

NUS Scotland is also calling for the government to ensure that new rent control measures properly tackle Scotland’s housing emergency by “bringing rents down to affordable levels” instead of just “slowing their rise”, which would be little comfort to those who already can’t afford to live.

The good news here is that to the extent to which rent controls are proposed, they will cover what a landlord can do between tenancies, not just during a tenancy – which is how the emergency rent controls have been working in Scotland during and beyond Covid.

The bill introduces a mechanism for establishing “rent control areas” in Scotland, enabling Scottish Ministers to regulate rent increases based on local authority assessments of rental conditions.

If (and when) an area is designated as it will limit increases to one of a number of criteria, but crucially the bill is explicit that this limit can be 0 per cent.

The designation of an area will be subject to consultation with “persons who appear to [the govt] to represent the interests of tenants and landlords under relevant tenancies of properties in the proposed rent control area”, so SUs will play an important role.

There will be new provisions that facilitate collecting data on rent levels, and really importantly they’ve found a way to handle the between tenancies issue:

Frequency with which rent may be increased: The rent payable under a current tenancy may not be increased if the let property was previously let on the first occasion after the setting of the initial rent under the current tenancy, unless the most recent previous rent increase took effect more than 12 months previously, and thereafter, more than once in a 12 month period.

Linking rent increases to the property rather than the tenancy will be deeply problematic for landlords seeking to jack the rent up – and will be fiercely opposed, partly on the “parity with PBSA” issue.

Hence students in these areas will no longer pay the price for being transient – because the Scottish Government has found a framework that can tackle record rises in a way that recognises that students are around for a long time collectively, but only for a short period individually.

There are some other helpful twiddles. They will change how damages for unlawful eviction are assessed in Scotland, basing calculations on monthly rent with minimum and maximum damage levels set at 3 and 36 times the monthly rent. The legislation will establish the right for tenants to request to keep a pet in both private and social housing, which cannot be unreasonably refused.

And there will be new mandated terms allowing private residential tenants to make certain changes to their property without landlord permission, and to request other changes that cannot be unreasonably refused. A bunfight is doubtless to come on what goes in each category.

There will also be some provisions on unclaimed tenancy deposits, and some tidying up on joint tenancies – the provisions will allow a joint tenant to end a tenancy without the consensus of all joint tenants, as long as they give 2 months’ notice to the other tenants regarding the intention to terminate the tenancy. That could cause all sorts of headaches for students – but also solve problems for many of them too.

(In domestic abuse scenarios, the victim will be able to unilaterally terminate the tenancy, preventing the abuser from stopping the termination.)

Meanwhile, the absence of PBSA (private/uni halls) and the fairly accidental and apologetic way in which the promised review of PBSA was “announced” in February by Scotland’s minister for higher and further education Graeme Dey really ought to cause concern – especially when the so-called “evidence” available on what, for example, happened in Glasgow 18 months ago continues to be in apparent denial about what actually happened.