Posted by Dan McIntyre on 10/9/2009, 11:32 am
Message modified by board administrator 10/9/2009, 11:37 am
I am out of here on a personal matter, and for the weekend. Happy Thanksgiving to all. I will not be checking messages or posts.
It has been a remarkable week. On Monday, Barbara Hall released a long awaited report which has the goal of reducing discrimination in rental housing. Progressive and well meaning people have welcomed the report, and even landlord spokespeople have had good things to say about it (with understandable reservations).
Unfortunately, it has brought out the worst in other people. Instead of looking for ways to ensure that nobody is denied housing on the basis of prejudice, people have been sending me nasty messages on some misguided belief that they now have to rent to anybody. The criteria for tenant selection is set out in the RTA, and landlords are expected to abide by the human rights code in tenant selection. You have to have a good reason to turn down an applicant, not a prejudicial reason. Someone with an income of $825 (and no other sources) can't rent an $825 apartment.
I quoted a landlord verbatim from another discussion board. I did not identify that landlord - or even the discussion board - and I am hopeful that landlords will re-examine their policies so that more people can access housiong that they can pay for. I also had no intention of picking on that one landlord, but the remarks seemed to best capture what I have been hearing.
I have also re-iterated that Government needs to be doing more for the hard to house and for low income people in general. I understand that landlords are in business for profit, and that they have a legitimate concern for their business and their assets. We can all agree that their needs to be a fair balancing of interests, although we may disagree on achieving that balance.
So instead of intelligent dialogue, and I certainly don't have all the answers, I see hatred. I see on another Board, that they are even giving credence to trolls that used to get away with posting on this board. They are even re-posting stuff from the most vile and un-credible internet source. I wrote to the people in charge there, to give them background and information. They claim this board is over moderated. I say that is better than letting people violate your own terms of use. And they continue to re-post from this Board, even though that violates their terms of service and our copyright.
The funny thing is that all this is coming from small landlords. My work is helping tenants deal with corporate landlords- to defend against various applications and to help tenants understand their rights and obligations.
Small landlords do have problems. And we call on all tenants to honour their responsibilities. But hating people does not help any one's cause. And attacking people who work full time, and take a salary nowhere near 90K, and who honour their obligations and contracts - just demeans the attacker.
In a free and democratic society, we all have the right to disagree and to disagree with the laws. I certainly disagree with many provisions in tenancy law. We do not have a right to break those laws.
We have provided this free board for tenants to discuss issues, and some times for me to get information out to the public.
Peace, happy thanksgiving, and fairness to all.
Dan
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