An independent dispute resolution procedure for collective rental disputes

Markus Kallifatides (S)

An independent dispute resolution procedure for collective rent disputes

Mr. Speaker! Good and secure housing for everyone is a self-evident goal for us Social Democrats. This, in turn, presupposes a national housing policy that focuses on good housing for everyone, not on a market that only works for some. We Social Democrats therefore stand for a general housing policy.

The home should be the safe point in every person's life. The housing affects which jobs we can take, where we can study, and how much of our waking time is spent on handling logistics and such as commuting to work. Politics determines if and when we can move out of our parents' home, affects which preschools and schools are available for our children, as well as our opportunities to feel peace and security in a home.

Good housing means for us Social Democrats both more rental apartments and more mixed residential areas with villas, terraced houses, and multi-family houses that break the growing housing segregation. We want to build not just houses, but we want to build communities. We therefore want to continue to build, and we shall build housing that more people can afford to live in. Thresholds that prevent groups from entering the housing market must be lowered.

Sweden has in recent years had the most extensive housing construction in 30 years. The Social Democratic goal of 250,000 new homes by 2020 was achieved with ease. But an uncertain global situation with rising material prices, increased general inflationary pressure, and rising interest rates now creates great concern and uncertainty for the real estate and construction industries, but also for households.

Housing construction is predicted to decrease, and increased costs for interest, energy, and management threaten to hit the real estate industry and households hard. Furthermore, the housing shortage remains constant, especially in the large cities. To meet these challenges, the state must take responsibility for those households that today have difficulty managing their housing situation, while at the same time, society must stimulate continued construction. To abolish the investment support for the construction of rental apartments with reasonable rents in this situation is irresponsible.

Rental housing is a form of housing that many prefer. In Sweden, there are 1.4 million rental apartments. Rental housing can be a good entry point as a first home when moving out from home. It can be an alternative later in life in the event of separation or in old age when the children move out and one desires a smaller home. Many also prefer the simplicity of avoiding the responsibility for maintenance and repairs.

But the rental housing system also means that one is at the mercy of the landlord and has less control over one's own housing. The Social Democratic-led government therefore did much to strengthen the protection for tenants. This involves measures against black market trading of rental contracts, unauthorized subletting and the extraction of over-rents from sublet tenants, strengthened security of tenure, and reinforced possibilities for interventions against unscrupulous property owners.

Mr. Speaker! The new right-wing government has now presented a proposition that was developed by the previous S-government and which means that an independent dispute resolution procedure is to be introduced for disputes regarding the annual rent adjustments between the collectively bargaining parties in the rental market. If the parties do not reach an agreement on the annual rent adjustment, the Rent Tribunal shall, at one party's request, appoint a special arbitrator to examine the dispute.

The parties shall, as a starting point, be obliged to enter into a negotiated agreement in accordance with the arbitrator's recommendation. The dispute resolution presupposes that the parties have agreed to use the procedure.

The purpose of the proposal is that disputes regarding the annual rent adjustments shall be able to be resolved quickly and efficiently and that the collective negotiations shall be able to be conducted more efficiently. The dispute resolution procedure reduces the risk of rent disputes between landlords and individual tenants and retroactive rent increases for the tenants. To further streamline the rent negotiations, stricter rules for how the negotiations shall be conducted are also proposed. A liability for damages is introduced for a party that does not attend a negotiation meeting, and damages shall amount to at least one amount specified by law.

The position of individual tenants is not affected by the inclusion of a condition in a negotiated order that disputes may be examined by an arbitrator. A tenant will therefore still have the right to request the Rent Tribunal's review of their own rental terms. The tenant may also apply to the Rent Tribunal for an amendment of a negotiated agreement that has been preceded by a recommendation from an arbitrator.

The party organizations within the public housing sector have for a long time established a dispute resolution body, the Rental Market Committee, through agreements. Dispute resolution there seems to function well by having disputes regarding the annual rent negotiations decided quickly and efficiently and having good acceptance among the actors within the public rental housing sector. But no corresponding possibility for collective dispute resolution exists for the private rental housing sector. The conditions also look different within the private rental sector. While the public housing companies are relatively similar and few in number, the companies on the private side are significantly more numerous and of very varying sizes. On the public side, virtually all actors are members of the property owners' organization Sveriges Allmännytta, while many private property owners are not members of any property owners' organization. There have therefore not been the same conditions to achieve a corresponding dispute resolution system for just the private sector solely through the efforts of the party organizations.

Since the need for a dispute resolution mechanism applies primarily to the private rental housing stock, the interest organizations Fastighetsägarna Sverige and Hyresgästföreningen are particularly affected by the proposals currently under consideration. They have also, in a joint letter during the preparation of the legislative matter, explained that they essentially support the design of the dispute resolution procedure now proposed in the underlying memorandum and now in the bill. They have also submitted proposals for certain minor adjustments in relation to the original proposals in the memorandum. Furthermore, they have stated that they agree that, in connection with the legislation on the procedure entering into force, they will supplement their joint recommended negotiation order with conditions on the use of the proposed dispute resolution procedure.

Mr. Speaker! It is with pleasure that we Social Democrats will vote yes to the committee's proposal. Rental housing is very important, and it must be both protected and developed as part of a general housing policy.

(Applause)

In this speech, Denis Begic (S) concurred.

The speech at riksdagen.se, in Swedish (opens in a new tab)

Malcolm Momodou Jallow (V)

Mr. Speaker! Let me begin by stating that it would have been good if we had had representatives for the government here in the chamber today to discuss this important, vital matter. But we will have to manage without them. That will be the case, I assume, during more debates over the next four years.

Today we are discussing an independent dispute resolution procedure for collective rent disputes.

The Swedish rent-setting system is unique to Sweden. The rent negotiation system and the user-value system are closely linked because the results of the rent negotiations directly affect the actual outcome of the user-value system.

The utility value system has come to be developed from an individual protection for the tenant to a framework for collective negotiations.

The collective bargaining system can be seen as a guarantee for the individual tenant's ability to assert their right within the framework of the utility value system.

Mr. Speaker! In the public housing market, which constitutes approximately 50 percent of the total rental market, there has long been an established dispute resolution model in the form of the Rental Market Committee. Something similar does not exist in the private rental market. Vänsterpartiet therefore welcomes a proposal that some form of statutory dispute resolution or mediation, if necessary, should be able to take place through the Rental Tribunal's provision. But such a solution must be limited to mediation in the process. It should not contain any new norm for rent setting, which we believe risks becoming the case if the bill being discussed here today were to be implemented in its entirety.

Mr. Speaker! In the bill, it is proposed, among other things, that aspects of use-value shall be excluded in dispute resolutions by the arbitrator appointed by the Rent Tribunal. This risks becoming problematic because all rent negotiations fundamentally concern determining the reasonable rent according to the Rent Act. This shall apply to all types of negotiations - even in what is called annual rent negotiation, for in that, the use-value aspect is an important part.

The basic conditions for collective bargaining are regulated in the Rent Negotiation Act. The Act does not state anything about which factors should be considered for rent increases. It is a matter that the parties shall decide entirely on their own.

Mr. Speaker! That the proposition proposes that the negotiations should have their starting point in "the economic development in the locality" therefore becomes a foreign state regulation that governs the rent setting. The annual rent negotiations cannot and shall not be able to be decoupled from the use-value negotiations in certain cases. All negotiations shall also continue to be about establishing the rent, that is, the use-value, for each housing unit covered by the negotiation rules. This shall be done in accordance with what the parties agree upon and nothing else.

What we mean, then, is that the parties in the rental market shall also continue to have responsibility for the setting of rents and the rent negotiations. What significance the utility value factors shall have when reasonable rent is determined shall also be handled by the parties in the rental market in the future and in accordance with what is regulated in the Rent Act and nothing else.

Mr. Speaker! In the bill, the government highlights that the dispute resolution procedure in the public housing sector in general works well, which we agree with. The government argues that an explanation for this can be that the parties on the public side, Hyresgästföreningen and the public housing companies, have a well-developed structure for their negotiations through conditions they have set in their negotiation orders.

In the proposition, the government writes as follows: "The dispute resolution system that the public housing companies and the Tenants' Association have established" - that is, the Rental Market Committee - "has proven to work well and has good acceptance among the parties. There is therefore reason to consider a similar solution that covers the entire rental market and can also be used within the private rental housing."

Vänsterpartiet agrees with this but does not think that is what the proposed bill actually results in.

Mr. Speaker! A major reason why the Rental Market Committee has functioned so well for nearly 70 years is that the parties themselves have developed the agreements and created the structures. The regional and local parties in the rental market are those who can best resolve any conflicts that arise in the negotiations because they have the greatest knowledge of the local conditions. A larger state intervention in this matter risks, in the long run, undermining confidence in the model and depriving the parties of the responsibility to maintain the negotiation system.

Vänsterpartiet therefore believes that a better way forward is to let the parties also in the private rental market establish a mediation and dispute procedure based on agreements between the negotiating parties themselves, in the same way as has been done within the public housing stock.

Even the Left Party believes, despite this, that the legislation should offer the negotiating parties the opportunity to resolve disputes through mediation under certain conditions. Such legislation must, however, respect the basic structure of the negotiation system, where the parties continue to take full responsibility for the rent setting and the rent negotiation. The legislation should therefore be limited to giving the parties the opportunity for mediation in disputes. In other respects, the parties in the rental market should contractually regulate the mediation procedure.

Furthermore, it is completely fundamental that a mediation de facto is based on what the parties invoke in the dispute, not on any norm specified in law as the bill proposes.

Vänsterpartiet considers that dispute resolution procedures linked to the collective rent negotiations should primarily be arranged by the parties themselves through voluntary agreements, while the current informal role of the rent tribunals as mediators should be regulated by law.

Vänsterpartiet will therefore continue to safeguard the Swedish model for rent setting with collectively negotiated rents according to the use-value principle. The future development of the negotiation system, something that is needed, shall be handled by the negotiating parties and not through state interventions.

We will also continue to say no to market rents or other systems that lead to poverty housing for the most economically vulnerable households. Our focus will always be to strengthen the rights of Sweden's 3 million tenants.

With that said, I would like to move for approval of the Left Party's reservation 1.

But, Mr. Speaker, allow me also to speak a little bit about the rental apartment as a form of housing. Rent setting is a very important housing policy issue. Approximately one-third of Sweden's population lives in rental apartments. This means that issues concerning rents and rent setting affect around 3 million of Sweden's population.

This is very important to understand. It is not possible, as the right-wing parties do, to continue to see the rental apartment as a temporary transitional home that one can continue to treat with contempt, which we have seen here in the chamber several times. It is the homes of 3 million people, and thus also their lives, that we discuss every time we debate rents, rent setting, market rents, and everything that belongs to that.

Mr. Speaker! Many of these tenants have for many years fought against high rents. They have fought against sell-offs and renovation bills. Today, they are fighting against the landlords' unreasonable demands for rent increases this winter, while the households themselves suffer from increasingly tougher economic conditions and many can no longer manage to stay above water.

Just a couple of days ago, TV4 did a report on how structural homelessness has increased. We see how a growing group of people become homeless due to poverty; they are too poor to enter the regular housing market.

In Malmö, there are almost 1,800 structurally homeless, people who are homeless because they are poor. One of these in Malmö, who was shown on TV4, is 58-year-old Ove Andersson. Ove was forced out onto the street in this dreadful cold for an entire month - an old man who gets around with the help of a walker due to a nerve disease and wanders around all of Malmö to find somewhere to get shelter during the night. It is not worthy of Sweden, one of the richest countries in the world.

There are many more like Ove, who wander around Malmö and other cities in Sweden, not because they have substance abuse problems or suffer from mental illness, but simply because they are poor. This is something we must also consider in this debate here in the chamber. As politicians, we have a responsibility.

At the same time as SVT, Expressen, and other major media outlets are currently reporting in full about the rain of billions that has fallen over the country's landlords over a decade, those same landlords are now demanding ten percent rent increases this winter. They refer to inflation and rising interest rates, while 37 percent of the rental income was pure profit for some of the absolute largest private rental property owners in the country. Nevertheless, they demand ten percent rent increases.

In SVT's reportage, it emerged that for example Wallenstam, Balder, Heimstaden and Rikshem, the four largest, multiplied value increases and management profits. The revenues rose from 4.4 billion in 2011 to 23.4 billion in 2021. At the same time, they demand ten percent rent increases.

The companies have enormous margins to cope with both inflation and rising interest rates. Households do not. Single parents, families with children, pensioners and students have zero margin. Instead, structural homelessness is increasing, and the evictions of families with children are predicted to become even more numerous in the coming years. How can anyone think this is sensible?

An independent dispute resolution procedure for collective rent disputes

Mr. Speaker! The government has been incredibly passive in this economic crisis. The investment support has been abolished, and we cannot see any measure aimed at helping the most vulnerable households - not a single attempt that could make it easier for this group, who almost exclusively live in rented housing.

All this shows how incredibly important it is to take both small and larger changes to the current rent-setting system seriously. Making life harder and even poorer for 3 million tenants benefits no one other than individual property owners. Reduced purchasing power, more evicted children, and even greater structural homelessness can never benefit society as a whole in any way.

The deliberation was hereby concluded.

(Decisions were made under § 8.)

The speech at riksdagen.se, in Swedish (opens in a new tab)