TAKE a moment to consider the following scenario: You’re a parent with two school-aged kids. You’re in a job that pays the bills but doesn’t allow you to save enough to buy your own place, which is why you’ve been renting a flat in the city you’ve worked in since your first child was born. This is where your family calls home.

One day, you get a notice from your landlord saying they want to sell your flat, and you have two months to move out. You try to look for properties near your children’s school and your work, but rents have gone up massively since you first moved into your flat. Your whole family will have to relocate, and leave behind your home, your community, your life.

For an increasing number of people in Scotland, this is the reality. With lower wages and less job security, only a few of us can dream of buying our own home. The sell-off of council homes in the post-Thatcher years has shrunk the supply of socially rented housing dramatically. As a consequence, the private rented sector has grown exponentially in size, with nearly 15 per cent of people in Scotland now living in privately rented homes.

At the moment, the Scottish private rented sector is extremely unregulated – tenants can be kicked out of their homes at will and rents have soared to an average national level of £548 per month. It’s definitely a landlord’s market.

Next Thursday, as MSPs vote on the new Private Housing (Tenancies) Bill, there is a good chance that the balance of power will tip a little bit more in favour of tenants. The bill is likely to get rid of the ‘no-fault ground’ for repossession, which means that landlords will no longer be able to chuck their tenants out just because the feel like it. The Bill is also set to introduce temporary, local rent controls in areas where rent levels have been rising too fast.

From the time the Greens first brought up renting rights in Holyrood, it has taken years of campaigning with civil society organisations like Shelter and Living Rent to get to this point. It’s a huge victory, but the work is far from finished. Even with the new Bill in place, Scotland’s private rented sector is practically a free-for-all compared to that in other countries.

Throughout the campaign to reform the private rented sector, we’ve been bombarded with doomsday messages from the landlord lobby, claiming that controls on rent levels and security for tenants would drive out investment and kill the private rented sector. The reality is that in the majority of European countries, there are large, thriving private rented sectors, where people enjoy high-quality housing and long-term security of tenure.

Take the Netherlands, for example. There, rents in the private sector are set according to a points system, where the quality, size and location of a property determine how much a landlord is allowed to charge a tenant. Many tenants in Scottish cities in particular are paying astronomical rents for tiny, poor-quality flats – a points system would take rent-setting off the unfair and unpredictable market, and ensure tenants get what they’re paying for. The temporary rent controls included in the upcoming housing Bill would be a small step in the right direction, but the Scottish Greens are committed to pushing for bolder reform and real rent controls in the future.

In Germany, when a landlord sells their property it goes to another owner as a package, so the tenant has the right to continue living there. This means that even those who cannot afford to buy can secure a long-term home to build their life around. In Scotland, even with the likely scrapping of the ‘no-fault’ repossessions, it would still be possible for a landlord to throw a tenant out of their home if they want to sell. This is why I’m proposing to amend the new housing Bill so that in the future, tenants could stay put even if a property changes hands.

Here in Scotland, we’re often told we need to stick with the status quo. Working for proper reform on issues like land ownership or energy production is smeared as “unrealistic”, “reckless”, or “idealistic” – you know the spiel. It’s true that until we get independence, our hands are tied on many aspects of the regressive, austerity-driven Tory agenda. But in the private rented sector, the Scottish Government has the power to make real reform. I hope the next few years will see the private rented sector transformed to a high-quality housing option, with real security of tenure and rents that are reasonable, not rip-offs. With a bigger group of Green MSPs and a growing tenants’ movement in Scotland, this bold reform is completely achievable.