As hundreds of thousands of people descend on the small Scottish town for the legendary golf championship ‘The Open’, students in St Andrews have told the BBC they may face eviction from their landlords.
The town’s population normally stands at about 19,000, but the golf tournament will see it grow to around 300,000 over July as tourist numbers boom, even before and after the championship.
St Andrews Students Face Eviction
One student, Wilson Jones, told BBC Scotland’s The Nine that his landlord had tried to evict him. He said: ‘The contract that my flatmate and I signed said we were to vacate this place from July 9 to 19.
‘Over the course of the last seven months, we were reaching out to our letting agency about how exactly that was supposed to work. The only response we really got was that we should just leave our things in the house and strip the bed.
‘My landlord didn’t care where I went, and they were going to make a whole lot of money out of it, presumably. It was ridiculous, absolutely ridiculous.’
According to the BBC, accommodation in and around St Andrews over The Open’s duration is reaching up to £1,000 per night.
Mr Wilson’s landlord told the BBC that ‘they planned to stay in the property themselves, and that they followed the guidance of their property agents.’
‘Fracturing our community’
However, tenant’s union Living Rent told the BBC that similar situations were popping up all over the town. Barry Will, a representative from Living Rent, claimed that in most circumstances ‘clauses in the leases don’t follow the correct practice of how a tenant should be evicted.’
Mr Will said; ‘We’re seeing landlords charge extortionate rent increases over the period of The Open.
‘We’re seeing landlords attempting to evict tenants across town. Really, what we’re seeing is tenants across St Andrews being let down because of a golf tournament coming to town.
‘The Open means a lot to St Andrews, but it shouldn’t come at the cost of fracturing our community, and that’s what we’re trying to fight against.’
‘This is not a holiday let’
Five years ago, the Scottish government introduced new laws to protect tenants.
Brian Gilmour, legal expert from Indigo Square Property, told the BBC that these clauses, telling tenants to vacate the premises for a week, isn’t valid under the new laws.
‘If the landlord went to enforce that clause of asking the tenant to move out, and the tenant said, ‘I’m not moving out’, the tenant would be in the right,’ Mr Gilmour stated.
‘At the end of the day, this is not a holiday let where you sign a long-term lease, this is somebody’s home.
‘What you’ve got is someone dictating, you need to get out of your home for somebody else to make money out of your home.’