Scotland’s first minister Nicola Sturgeon has announced a freeze on rents in the social and private sectors and a moratorium on evictions to shield people from the cost of living crisis.
Sturgeon announced the plans in her annual programme for government speech.
The emergency legislation to protect renters will be implemented immediately and last until at least March 2023.
Scottish Property Federation director David Melhuish said the plans would do “nothing to address the wider challenges of supplying enough homes for people to buy or rent”.
“If anything, this policy threatens to derail efforts to improve the supply of new, purpose-built homes for rent as investors pause to ask what else the Scottish government might be prepared to do,” he added. “Private rental sector providers have endured years of restrictive measures that have led to the sector losing homes for rent, with both renters and providers forced into using a tribunal system that is simply overrun.”
Melhuish said he feared there would be a further loss of homes in the Scottish private rented sector and that there would be the long-term consequences on investment in the nascent build-to-rent sector.
“Already since this announcement we are aware of a multi-million-pound investment that has been put on pause,” he said. “We call on the Scottish government to ensure there is support for affected property owners, who are also facing significant cost increases. We also need to see meaningful action to boost all-tenure housing supply, which is the only sustainable solution to addressing upward pressure on rents.”
The emergency legislation to protect tenants in private and socially rented homes comes only a few months after a similar proposal by Scottish Labour, to freeze rents for two years until rent controls are introduced in 2024, was voted down by SNP and Scottish Green MSPs.
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