Changes to the Housing (Scotland) Bill to enshrine tenancy rights for the terminally ill and recently bereaved
Published: 9 October 2025
9 October 2025: Dr Naomi Richards writes about the direct impact her study, Dying in the Margins, has had on the new Housing (Scotland) Bill, and shares the powerful story of Stacey and Joost that emerged from the study, that helped to drive the amendments to the Bill.
9 October 2025: Dr Naomi Richards writes about the direct impact her study, Dying in the Margins, has had on the new Housing (Scotland) Bill, and shares the powerful story of Stacey and Joost that emerged from the study, that helped to drive the amendments to the Bill.
Blog by Dr Naomi Richards
Between 2019 and 2023, I led a research study called Dying in the Margins. This was funded by UKRI and supported by Marie Curie. The study was an attempt to better understand the experiences of people dying at home in circumstances of financial hardship and deprivation in the UK. Uniquely, we used a variety of visual methods to capture people’s experiences and launched a series of exhibitions called The Cost of Dying.
A key finding from the research was the significance of people’s housing struggles. The extreme distress experienced by some dying people is not limited to physical pain, but can stem from their material circumstances, home environment, and their interactions with landlords and housing staff, especially when they feel a lack of recognition and compassion for their circumstances.
This is why we are so delighted by the news that recognition is finally arriving in the form of various accepted amendments to the new Housing (Scotland) Bill, passed by Parliament at the end of September. These amendments will mean that:
- Eviction Protections: Courts and First-Tier Tribunals must now actively consider the impact of terminal illness on tenants, their households, and landlords before proceeding with eviction.
- Succession Rights: The qualifying residence period for succession of a social tenancy has been reduced from 12 months to 6 months , making it easier for surviving household members to retain their homes.
- Extended Occupancy Period: Joint tenants who qualify to succeed a Scottish Secure Tenancy after the death of a tenant can now remain in the property for up to 6 months, up from the previous 3-month limit.
These legislative amendments come on the back of extensive efforts by terminal illness charity Marie Curie to highlight our findings to politicians and ministers in Government. Meghan Gallacher, MSP, tabled the amendments to the Housing Act with the following comments which received significant cross-party support:
“The “Dying in the Margins” research study by the University of Glasgow and Marie Curie, which documents the direct impact of financial hardship on terminally ill people, has been central to informing the amendments. In particular, there is the story of Stacey and Joost, who faced significant issues in getting an accessible home that met Stacey’s need, followed by a decision to evict Stacey’s widower from their home just 12 days after Stacey died. The amendments will go some way to preventing such instances from happening again and ensuring that everyone is treated with dignity throughout their end-of-life experience.”
The story of Stacey and Joost
The story of Stacey and Joost was one of the most powerful to emerge from our study. Stacey, who had a rare genetic condition called Li-Fraumeni syndrome, lived in a cramped, one-bed housing association flat on the sixth floor of a high-rise tower block in Glasgow with her husband, Joost, and her mother, Irene. After months of requesting to move, she finally got the keys to a new ground-floor, two-bed flat. But as she arrived, she immediately collapsed and was rushed to hospital, and from there moved to the hospice which she never left. She never got to spend a night in her new flat. Within two weeks of his wife’s death, the housing association served Joost an eviction notice from the flat they had fought so hard to move into. The notice arrived three days before Stacey’s funeral.
When Joost contacted us about the eviction order, we were shocked by this seeming lack of compassion and disregard for his grief-stricken state. As he later told us:
"When I called the Housing Association they told me ‘You need to go to the homeless shelter.’ People need time to grieve. They need time to put everything in order. It’s not human to kick someone out of a house a few days before a funeral, and just literally say, 'it’s not our problem'. This needs to be written in the law."
In response to his request for help, our research team worked with Marie Curie and a local politician to publicise his story. Eventually, the housing association agreed to extend his tenancy on the flat by four months.
The forthcoming changes to the Housing (Scotland) Act will mean that those who are terminally ill and recently bereaved and who live in rented accommodation won’t have to worry about being evicted when they are in an extremely vulnerable state.
The End of Life Studies Group continues to undertake research into end of life experiences across our society, including drawing attention to people who are marginalised and disadvantaged by bureaucratic systems.
Author
Dr Naomi Richards is Director of the End of Life Studies Group at the University of Glasgow. She is a Senior Lecturer in Social Science and a social anthropologist by training. Dr Richards has been funded to undertake empirical and theoretical investigations into the UK’s assisted dying debate, the relationship between assisted dying and palliative care internationally, and the experiences of poverty and structural disadvantage at end of life. Naomi teaches multiple courses on the University of Glasgow’s End of Life Studies Programme (PGCert/PGDip/MSc) and pioneered a partnership with the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh to produce a unique microcredential on End of Life Challenges and Palliative Care.
First published: 9 October 2025
