Scotland: Charity attacks 'Dickensian' evictions
Wed, 17 Dec 2008 | By Emily Rogers
Social landlords in Scotland are evicting twice as many people as are being repossessed by mortgage lenders, according to a report by Shelter Scotland.
The charity’s research, published today, shows that for every thousand social tenants in Scotland last year, 13.1 had a decree for eviction granted against them, double the 6.8 per thousand homeowners hit by decrees by mortgage lenders.
The document, Evictions by social landlords in Scotland , shows nearly 3,600 tenants of social landlords were evicted last year, almost all of them for rent arrears. The number was an 8 per cent rise on the 3,295 social tenants evicted in 2003/04.
The report shows that councils took 13,382 tenants to court last year, eventually evicting 2,089 of them. Housing associations took 6,657 tenants to court, evicting 1,484 of them.
Shelter Scotland director Graeme Brown said the report made ‘sobering reading’. He added: ‘It shows that eviction rates in the social sector, primarily for rent arrears, which should be recovered without resorting to such Dickensian measures, are alarmingly high.’
Shelter is calling on the Scottish Government to order the Scottish Housing Regulator to root out all avoidable evictions and for social landlords to develop alternatives. It also wants the government to introduce a protection package for tenants comparable to the initiatives recently announced to protect homeowners from repossession.
The Scottish Federation of Housing Associations hit back, arguing that only 931 of the 1,484 figure were ‘actual evictions’, as the remaining 553 homes associations took possession of were due to ‘tenant abandonment’.
The federation’s deputy chief executive Andrew Field said: ‘We dispute Shelter’s misleading contention that these raw figures mean that housing associations callously evict people as soon as they fall behind with their rent.’
He added: ‘Housing associations in Scotland have an excellent track record in the sympathetic management of rent arrears, prioritising preventive measures before remedies.’
Scotland has a target to provide all unintentionally homeless people with access to a permanent home by 2012.
Eviction rates
The five biggest percentages of evictions or cases of tenant abandonment* in local authority areas, against the number of lettings
Midlothian 22.1 per cent (60 cases)
East Ayrshire 13.4 per cent (179 cases)
West Lothian 12.8 per cent (92 cases)
North Lanarkshire 12.6 per cent (410 cases)
Renfrewshire 12.1 per cent (170 cases)
Scottish average 7.8 per cent (2,089 cases)
*Tenant abandonment refers to a property being recovered after a tenant abandons it during legal action