August 25, 2013
The Winnipeg Free Press had a story about Winnipeg’s worst rental properties.
It’s very common for the media to make landlords (especially small residential landlords) their favourite whipping boy/girl.
We’re only the people who create safe and affordable housing for thousands of renters across Manitoba.
We’re easy to attack. We don’t have the millions of dollars in resources the large corporate landlords have to hire lawyers and public relations specialists.
We spend our money paying our taxes on time and maintaining our properties in the hope our tenants will stay, pay the rent on time, not damage the rental unit, and maybe even appreciate the risk we take to provide safe and affordable housing. Hey, let’s follow the Ontario model of treating small residential landlords like serfs.
But that’s not sexy. Stories about good landlords are boring, plain…vanilla in a media world that craves excitement and hits to their website. Who cares if the government creates rules that will lead to less investment and lead good landlords to invest outside the province.
There was an excellent letter to the Free Press from a landlord’s perspective.
It surprising it was even published because it was so honest.
Re: Revealing the ‘Peg’s worst homes (July 2). I have been a landlord since 2010 in the North End. I bought two houses, both of which were restored to prime condition. Each time a tenant moved, I had to spend thousands of dollars to restore the home to a livable condition.
I recently sold one of the houses, because I had to spend about $15,000 to restore it. The tenant had called Manitoba Health to complain about the condition of the house. Manitoba Health condemned the house, doing us a huge favour.
They got rid of the tenant legally, where as a landlord, I couldn’t. This house was restored and sold. I now look at stories like this with more open eyes. Is the landlord a slum landlord or is the tenant a slum tenant?
The Free Press writes stories about slum landlords all the time. Don’t you think it’s about time to write about the slum tenant?
PAT KRAHN
Winnipeg
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To Discuss this and other landlord and tenant issues go to the Manitoba Landlord Forum.
