The Streakers resisting. iilimaetiee I predict that next month we'll be getting one delegation after another from the rooming house operators, claiming inability to comply with city bylaws. Some will claim that the demand for fire sprinklers is now so great that there aren’t enough people to in- PHONEY SURVEY HIT Landlords open attack | on rights for tenants free will and under no duress of By MAURICE RUSH will a Landlord associations who own any kind. and manage 100,000 rental units in growing tenants movement, and ment Residents”’ tenants. Smoothly written, with many The very fact that the landlord B.C. have joined forces to fight the has the power to deprive tenants of concerned such controls could his or her place to live at his own have published the first issue of an Pleasure, something akin to the undesirable to tenants. . . .” ive ‘Newsletter to Apart- feudal lords of old, makes it which is Tidiculous to think that tenants will currently being distributed to feel free to express their real opinions when they are under this kind of presuure from the landlord. ; : F Here are some of the issues on misleading arguments aimed at which tenants are asked to ‘‘agree being used. I perceive it does not justify blanket controls that put the whole industry in shackles and I am bring about conditions highly “T feel that my landlord should ™onth. be able to give notice to vacate to an undesirable or bad _ tenant without having to give written reasons, without being forced to defend his action if the tenant City tenants fight new landlord ploys ByALD. HARRY RANKIN City Council and rooming house operators in downtown eastside Vancouver (that is the area roughly east of Cambie and north of Georgia) are-*on a collision course. The tenants, most of them poor people, are in the middle. For the city the issue is the en- forcement of recently passed ‘ health and fire bylaws that require renovations in these rooming houses to make them safe and fit for human habitation. Some rooming house operators are Sd stall them. Others will say that they’ve been held up by strikes. And so on, and so on.:.. The real reason behind these excuses, of course, is that some rooming house operators do not want, nor do they intend to abide by city bylaws. But that isn’t the end of the ploys City Council is now receiving applications to convert a number of large. rooming houses into restaurants and offices. Ap- parently they think or pretend to think that this would bring in a greater return in rents than ren- ting rooms at $65.00 or $75.00 a Secondly threats are being made by owners that some rooming houses will be closed-down com- so. pletely, rather than comply with city bylaws. I would estimate that dividing tenants, the Newsletter contains a particularly odious and questionable ‘‘tenant opinion survey”’ which ought to be roundly condemned and boycotted by tenants. Posing under the innocent guise of being an “‘opinion survey” the questions are~slanted to get the tenants backing behind the lan- dlords fight against provincial government legislation which benefits tenants. What is particularly odious is that tenants are asked to answer the questions in the survey and “return them to the building manager,” who. apparently will also distribute them to tenants. There is a place to sign one’s name at the end of the survey after the declaration, ‘I have expressed my 100 per cent, disagree, agree with parts underlined.” “T feel that my landlord is doing his best to compete for good tenants and that he is providing me with satisfactory accommodation at a reasonable price, in view of rising costs. Accordingly, I feel we do not need rent control in our building.” : “Tam concerned that rent controls will reduce the quality and quantity of rental accommodation and that the shortage of. rental accommodation is driving up the cost of housing. Accordingly I am opposed to rent controls in general.” “I believe that complaints of ‘rent gouging’ and other problems between landlords and tenants have been exaggerated out of objects, and without having to pick from a narrow Official list of ‘just cause’. I’m reluctant to be forced to give evidence against an of- fending tenant and I am concerned about providing too much protection to bad tenants. Instead, I feel that my landlord should have full discretion. . .”’ A worse example of weighted questions it is difficult to imagine. Any ordinary tenant who un- dertakes to answer in the negative — that is against the landlord — could be considered by the landlord or his manager as ‘‘a poor tenant’’ and face eviction without the tenant having any defence at all since under present legislation tenants have no protection against eviction — one of the changes being See LANDLORD, pg. 11 Tree, en aonereenemneni about 500 rooms have been clos down already. a To understand this problem ¥ also necessary to understand many of these buildings are ow? by trust companies. They lea them to operators at a handso profit. Then it is up to the operato: to squeeze the tenants, who have produce the profits for both operators and owners. What is the answer to this ¥ situation? One of them is to su? close down those rooming hi that refuse to meet the cily® minimum health and fire sta dards. And that applies whe they areused as rooming houses a restaurants or offices. ; Secondly, a massive building program should be undertaken this area by senior governments i provide accommodation similar that of the Oppenheimer ; now being built by the’ city © single, homeless people. ack \ ‘Thirdly, the city should not ba down on the deadlines it S compliance with its by-laws. Att same time the city should p nie now for alternative housing for any people forced out due to closure the premises, until neW a commodation is built. Finally I think the city should look into what are called ee leases. If a lessee can only se of operating the place for two three years, the cost of a new rs sprinkler system, for exampl® poses a real problem. The city such a case should act a honest broker, bring the el and operators together, and rs on longer leases, say of 10 years of In this way the costs zed renovation could be amo im over a longer period without i posing too much of a finan¢ = = Bonwit: | ‘The shoe down the road Sold for $98,000.’ opinions in this survey of my own TOM McEWEN he Three Musketeers of this unwanted federal election are now on the hustings getting steamed up for the fray. There is, however, little if anything, collectively or in- dividually, to compare them to that famous trio im- mortalized by the great French writer, Alexandre Dumas. But since the image rather than the issues is of prime importance (in their opinion), the comparison seems apt. In this federal election which “‘the people don’t want”’ to quote prime minister Pierre Elliot Trudeau, that monopoly D’Artagnan is now busy working up another image; from the charisma of a swinger to that of a “canny” politico (which got him a minority ad- ministration by a mere deuce last time around), he now adopts the posture of a square-jawed fighting D’Artagnan, determined to win for the Canadian people more of what they “‘don’t want”. The pose fits him well, possibly the best yet adopted to date. With this new image, he is running on his “‘record’’, i.e. the record of a politically- - spavined Liberal administration. Truly an Augean stable _ with an astounding assortment of political nags, well trained by association and service in a gallop for "PACIFIC TRIBUNE—FRIDAY, MAY 31 1974—PAGE 2 proportion. The actual situation as monopoly, but slower than a muddy track on the le’s needs. But D’Artagnan-Trudeau promises to Since all that — by changing nothing. Then we have Tory leader Robert Stanfield, leader “Her Majesty’s Loyal Opposition” (if one can forget nee = irrepressible octogenarian anti-Sovieteer and defender of all true-blue Tory faiths, the Right Honorable Dief). Aside from reducing his loyal opposition to the simple exercise of a loud “‘no”’ every time or on any issue D’Artagnan Trudeau Says “yes’’ the Hon. (Bob) has two prime am- bitions :— to become the next prime minister of Canada And in that capacity, to clamp a wage and prices freeze on all Canadians. From all previous Tory records, we can be very sure that his wage freeze will be imposed long before we hear anything on a price freeze. Underwear monopoly kings, like all other monopoly extortionists are not built that way, and free enterprise brooks no interference with its extraction of maximum profits, its sacred right of private property or its collective determinati “the traffic will bear’’. ee It therefore follows that ‘‘the le wh : i election” don’t want their livelihood Gaeta eae standard levels either, and least of all in the midst of an unprecedented monopoly affluence. Even the swapping of a Liberal musketeer for a Tory reprint in Ye Olde Canadian tradition, won’t compensate for the ten or more million bucks squandered for such a “change”’ Then we have Musketeer No. 3, NDP national leader election campaign some purpose and aim, PF? hardship on anyone. The city should ac questions without any ane delay. Any delay now would iyeS dermine and scuttle the initial a we have taken to make this 4 0 the city habitable and safe. Te” organizations in the area ord: j looking to the city to keep its at ‘i 3 We have already had too aa nv fires and too many unneces deaths. — WOMEN UNDER SOCIALISM There are 47,313,000 wore women in the USSR today, apvell percent of the labor force. ea woman worker is entitle 0 days days maternity leave — con before and 56 days after finement with full pay A ” en Davie Lewis, who specializes in “balance-of-POwE ent garde and riposte swordsmanship, often to the det tol | and embarrassment of his own NDP socialist t which doesn’t see why the people should be satisfi t hall half-a-loaf at enhanced prices, when a whole loaf Os the price is easily available. * the Davie has intimated that he is ready to com 10 08 (7 Wicks voting aid of any administration in ‘“‘distress’’, un Tory, which is prepared to allow a few crumbs to. manna from heaven, upon the heads of a mul people. poll” For sound effects, the old monopoly “welfare ai 3 will still suffice just so long as that is all Musketee! "tg plans to do about this perennial highway robb las soften its effect Davie has come up with a “new” fo jfyie a subtle bit of his “planned economy”. Without SPT thal how “‘high” is high, or how “‘low’’ is low, he prop nigh! high-paid workers should refrain from seeking still gorie wage increases — until those in the low-wage cate (sweatshops, etc.) are able to “catch up”. A handful of Communist MP’s in the Hous? 05 alleviate all this meaningless wordage, give I 3 people that every election is worthwhile, when rhe know what they are voting for. From they . Musketeers now warming up in their own WINS oy never know — hence they will in all likelihood get the same.