# Slumlord news.



## dirtyfacedan (Sep 18, 2009)

I though i would start a thread on Slumlords, and their evil ways. Tenants rights, and poverty are two issues I pay attention to a lot, they go hand in hand. I fucking hate slumlords, land speculators who make their money ripping off those who make very little. Please add your local stuff, it's nice to know what goes on elsewhere. 

from Time To Get Medieval? | Mostly Water

Time To Get Medieval?
Contributed by quidprocrow on Thu, 2009-09-17 21:42.


A few weeks ago, in one of my usual internet searches for local tenant news stories, I ran across an article that saddened and enraged me. A three-month old baby in Louisiana died in her home from blood loss due to rat bites. There were holes in the walls and holes in the floor. Evidently, the landlord spent FEMA money earmarked to repair the house on something else, but the authorities were still trying to determine if they should file criminal charges against the parents!

Judging by the comments I found on various websites, most people want to blame the tenants for this tragedy. “They should have been watching their kid.” Or this particularly vile response from an especially moronic Examiner reader:

“It's always someone else fault, isn't it? Why not blame the landlord …? Yes, he may be a slumlord. His rental house is probably a dump. But it's a matter of common sense and personal responsibility. Natalie's parents must have had the option of moving out and finding a better place. Or taking it upon themselves to fix up the home.”

William Randolph Hearst would have been pleased with this commentator—another dupe so mired in her own petty, vindictive, little world that she will buy anything and crap on anyone less fortunate to make herself feel better. How about a little compassion? I mentioned last week that many tenants opt to live in these hovels because they're afraid they'll be evicted if they complain or that they can't afford to move.

Why not blame the landlord? It's a good place to start. I don't know if Natalie's parents informed the landlord about the conditions in the house. I don't know where his culpability began. All I know is that he must have known something. He freakin' applied for FEMA money to repair the house! The news article notes that the landlord was unavailable for comment. If he won't comment I will.

We don't live in the middle ages. Or do we? As I have already noted, it wasn’t until 1970 that California codified what constituted a "tenantable" dwelling and finally in 1986 the California legislature passed the law allowing a tenant to avoid eviction for nonpayment of rent on an uninhabitable dwelling. We do not live in the New York City tenements in 1881 when the New York Times graphically reported that a baby died from rat bites. Or do we? Note that the report stated that the family was "poor but cleanly" but the landlord who rented the dwelling to them was not mentioned at all.

What happens to landlords who are convicted of habitability crimes? Not much, it seems, just like medieval times. I did a quick search of the web to find articles about landlords who have been punished criminally in the United States.There a few instances when landlords have been sentenced to jail for code violations, but it is interesting to note that most of the articles that chronicle criminal sentences for landlords come from Great Britain and Canada, not here. Is there a health care comment in that?

This example while rare is, unfortunately, typical: An Ohio landlord was sentenced to ninety days in jail for renting a trailer that he knew had faulty wiring. Five tenants died in a fire caused by that faulty wiring. Or this travesty in the Bronx.

Mr. Kahn, the Cheese Ball turned Dracula featured in the video, was finally sentenced to nine days in jail and fined $156,000 for failing to address 2,268 open violations at this building.

Ninety days in jail when five people are dead? Nine days in jail for endangering the lives of hundreds of tenants? There are plenty of pot smokers in the United States spending far more time in jail. "Oh, Dave," some of you more legal-minded folk out there are saying. "You're a lawyer, you should know that you can't charge people with crimes if you can't prove their intent. That slumlord in Ohio didn't intend to kill five people."

Well, I say, that's the problem when you apply medieval legal doctrine to modern problems—a conundrum unique to landlord tenant law. In other words, we must change our core assumptions about the landlord tenant dynamic. Rather than relying on thousand year old common law to assess a landlord's intent when he takes a tenant's money, only to put the tenant in peril, we should pass laws to define that transaction as theft. If a tenant dies during the commission of that theft, the landlord is guilty of murder, pure and simple. It is only a matter of writing laws to define the crime, just like we did when we mistakenly defined smoking marijuana as a crime. When tenants can get sick or die due to a landlord's fraud, it is no mistake to define that as a crime. Tenants need legislative protection from unscrupulous landlords and should be demanding it every minute of every day.

Bad Landlord

Oh, you say, it will cost too much money to enforce new laws to curb murderous landlords. In California we spend $170,000,000 a year to to enforce marijuana laws. Don't tell me we ain't got the dough. Finally if we, as a society, are going to insist upon maintaining our medieval, status quo assumptions about how landlords and tenants should interact, maybe we should consider bringing back medieval punishment for bad landlords—pillories.







also.... linked in solidarity from NO2010.com, Slumlord Has No Right to Evict Tenants | No Vancouver 2010 Winter Olympics On Stolen Native Land
(re-stolen from the media whores at Global/Canwest)



Slumlord Has No Right to Evict Tenants
September 10, 2009 - 22:36 — no2010
Homeless person in Vancouver's Downtown Eastside

Rat-infested hotel has no right to evict tenants, says city

By Doug Ward, VANCOUVER SUN, September 8, 2009

VANCOUVER -- The City of Vancouver is urging tenants of a Downtown Eastside hotel to stay put in their vermin-infested units despite an eviction notice issued by their landlord.

Chief licence inspector Barb Windsor said Tuesday that Golden Crown Hotel owner Daniel Jun has no legal right to evict his low-income tenants, and that the city fears they could end up homeless.

Windsor said the city would like to know whether Jun intends to renovate the rooms and rent them to higher-income clients, perhaps visitors to the 2010 Olympics.

She said Jun has not applied for renovation permits.

Jun could not be reached for comment. But in a notice given in August, the Golden Crown owner told his tenants that they would have to leave by the end of September for a few months so that pest control workers could rid the hotel of rats, bedbugs and cockroaches.

“We have no choice but close the doors in order to improve the hotel,” Jun said in the letter.

Windsor said Jun can’t legally evict the tenants of the single-room occupancy hotel without the approval of the provincial Residential Tenancy Branch.

“We are saying that the evictions are not legal,” said Windsor. “He (Jun) has to give the tenants proper reasons on proper forms.”

In his letter, Jun said the eviction became necessary after the City of Vancouver ordered him to clean up the hotel.

But chief licence inspector Windsor, in a Sept. 3 letter to Jun, said that the city has not issued any orders “that would necessitate the eviction of tenants from that building.”

“Accordingly, the city does not condone the actions you have taken.”
Windsor said pest control could be conducted without mass evictions, and that the city wants to work with Jun on getting rid of the vermin.

Jun has told the tenants they could return at the same rent once the hotel resumes operation.

But the Downtown Eastside Residents’ Association is advising the tenants not to trust the owner’s promise and to stay in the hotel.

“These evictions are utterly and completely illegal,” said DERA executive director Kim Kerr.

“No doubt these people are living with an abundance of cockroaches, bedbugs and rats. But he (Jun) has legal obligations and pest control doesn’t require him to vacate the building.”

Kerr believes the Golden Crown owner wants the tenants gone so that he can either take advantage of the Olympic market or sell the property.







Another....stolen from the state run CBC

Methadone users claim unfair treatment

Methadone users on Vancouver's Downtown Eastside say they have been kicked out of their Hastings Street hotel for not getting their prescriptions filled exclusively at the hotel.

Twin brothers Randy and Daniel Howery, who are on methadone to treat their heroin addictions, say they are getting no support from the agency dealing with landlord and tenant disputes, which has ruled the residence is technically a recovery house, not a hotel, so the evictions cannot be challenged.

The brothers were renters at the Palace Hotel and were evicted by pharmacist George Wolsey, the landlord's representative, for not getting their prescriptions filled exclusively at the hotel, the brothers' lawyer Laura Track told CBC News.

Wolsey is an acting director of the Wilson Recovery Society. The Residential Tenancy Branch ruled the Palace is a recovery house for addicts, exempting it from laws protecting tenants.

The Pivot Legal Society is now asking the B.C. Supreme Court for a review of the tenancy branch's decision.

"We say that providing methadone is not a good enough reason for the hotel to be outside the jurisdiction of the act," said Track.

A CBC investigation last year into methadone kickbacks in the Downtown Eastside led to the closure of a pharmacy George Wolsey was involved with.
Can be lucrative for pharmacists

At the time, tenants at the Wonder Hotel, also run by Wolsey, were evicted for getting their methadone elsewhere.

The drug regimen can be lucrative for pharmacists, with dispensing fees paid by the province.

"This guy's not a stranger to us," said Kim Kerr, executive director of the Downtown Eastside Residents Association.

"He forces people to only get their prescriptions through his pharmacy and if they refuse to, he throws them out. There is no treatment," Kerr said.

B.C.'s College of Pharmacists would not confirm whether Wolsey's licence is under review, but it recently adopted a new bylaw prohibiting pharmacists from telling patients where to fill prescriptions.


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