LightningMinion gave a speech at an event organised by Living Rent Edinburgh:

At school, our children are being taught that the 3 basic needs of animals are food, water, and shelter; yet Scotland, a wealthy, developed, European nation is failing many Scots with that last need. In the audience I am sure that there are many people who have directly experienced the failings of Scotland’s housing system, be that high rents, poor housing conditions, or homelessness. This election, housing policy is Scottish Labour’s top priority, and we are committed to building a better Future For All by making housing accessible and affordable to everyone in Scotland.

Your main campaign is for rent controls. As the MSP for Kirkcaldy, I have been contacted by too many constituents telling me that their landlord is planning to raise their rent and that they cannot pay the higher rent, forcing them to move out and seek a place elsewhere. This is exactly why Scottish Labour has endorsed a specific type of rent control, called rent stabilisation measures, which will limit such mid-contract rent increases. In England, the Groko government introduced rent stabilisation measures to cap rent increases at inflation; it is time Scotland followed suit.

However, the truth is, this is not enough. The level from which rents are being increased is already too high and unaffordable for many. The best way to bring these rents down is to build more housing which is genuinely affordable. I wrote legislation creating the Scottish Housing Agency with this primary aim. Before its foundation, planning policy was largely in the control of councillors, who too often blocked necessary housing projects for no reason other than blatant NIMBY-ism. The Scottish Housing Agency took over planning responsibilities, ensuring that NIMBY views are not blocking the planning system. However, more action is needed to boost housebuilding. To achieve this, Scottish Labour is proposing boosting the powers of the Scottish Housing Agency to make it a true national housing and planning agency which can grant or reject planning approval to housing projects, as well as coordinating and funding the construction of houses. When I served as Communities Secretary in the Rainbow Coalition, I set up the Affordable Housing Fund to provide private housing developers with the necessary funding to develop houses, with this funding going explicitly towards affordable housing projects only, so that more affordable houses are built each year. Scottish Labour plans to transfer the administration of this fund to the Scottish Housing Agency, as well as giving it the responsibility of building social housing.

To further boost the number of social houses in Scotland, we plan to abolish Right To Buy. Right To Buy has been a poorly implemented policy which has led to the depletion of the social housing stock, contributing to today’s shortage of social housing.

Social housing is one type of housing which Scotland will need a lot of in the coming year. It will play an important role in ending homelessness as Scottish Labour has endorsed the Helsinki model for ending homelessness. In this model, all those who are homeless are given a house without any conditions whatsoever. In Helsinki, this strategy virtually eliminated homelessness, whereas other cities with different strategies have failed to end homelessness. But fully implementing the Helsinki model needs enough social housing, and it will take some time for them to be built. In the meantime, a Scottish Labour government would fund temporary accommodation so that the homeless have a warm bed to sleep in at the very least and so that they do not have to brace the cold streets every night.

Then, once the house to house someone who is homeless and sleeping in temporary accommodation is ready for them to move in, under our plans, they would be offered the house without any conditions for an indefinite term. However, thanks to Tory legislation, currently all social housing contracts have to be for a fixed term, so Scottish Labour will repeal this and will move to indefinite-term social tenancies. Additionally, we will also amend housing legislation so that when social landlords are selecting new tenants, they prioritise those who are at risk of homelessness, those who are homeless, and those who live in poor living conditions.

However, no one should live in poor living conditions. Scottish Labour plans to draft a new, landmark Housing Bill to make these changes to the housing system; and one part of the Housing Bill will deal with living conditions. It will introduce stronger rules for living conditions in rented accommodation, including more stringent rules on the size of rooms in houses of multiple occupation, to ensure that all houses are fit for human habitation. The Housing Bill will also introduce a right to own pets in rented accommodation. And finally, the Housing Bill will end no-fault evictions to provide greater security to those living in rented accommodation.

The final policy I would like to talk about is help to buy. The Rainbow Coalition introduced a help to buy scheme called the First Home Fund and its intention was to support Scots who have never owned a home before and cannot afford any home on the market to get onto the housing ladder by providing them with a loan. However, analysis of help to buy schemes has found that they ultimately do not help and actually end up increasing house prices by subsidising demand; and that supply-side solutions are needed instead. This is why we have committed to abolishing the First Home Fund, and why our manifesto focuses on boosting the supply of housing in Scotland.

To summarise my speech, Scottish Labour is running on a platform of building a Future For All this election, and we can only do so by fixing our broken housing system. With our plans to boost the supply of housing, to bring down house prices and rents, to strengthen the rights of tenants living in private accommodation, and to end homelessness, I believe that Scottish Labour has a plan to tackle the housing crisis. I hope I can count on your support this Friday at the polling box. Thank you!

Following this speech, Living Rent Edinburgh organised a protest.