Rental Housing

There is so much wrong with our housing system, from needless homelessness to spiralling costs (which have shut a generation out of housing) to over-mortgaged homeowners struggling financially to the sheer environmental inefficiency of much of the housing we build to the failure to build homes ho

Ben Wray analyses new data on the experience of living in Scotland’s private rented sector, and argues for reversing the trend under devolution of increasing privatisation of the rental market.

This paper makes the case for national rent controls and outlines the problems with the current system of rent pressure zones which have so far been inadequate at preventing the problems high rents and rent insecurity in Scotland.

This paper presents a model for building an unlimited number of houses for social rent on a zero-subsidy basis using the Scottish National Investment Bank.

Good housing needs more than good housing policy: housing policy needs to be part of wider social changes towards a more equal, community-centred, environmentally sustainable society, but good housing policy can make an important contribution to those changes.

The United Kingdom’s housing policies have been ideologically-driven, and have led to the current crisis of strangled investment, under-provision and a general flow of power and money from civic society to the wealthy.

The borrowing cap for the Scottish Parliament should be removed or lifted substantially so public expenditure can be used where needed; but, more importantly the Scottish National Investment Bank should be given full dispensation to act as a bank and thus capitalise from sources such