I try to be nice...I do.

city's poor could suffer housing loss
Landlord predicts owner will sell or close rooming houses if upgrades are forced
Martha Tropea , Daily NewsPublished: Friday, February 29, 2008
A Nanaimo property owner worries that a new city initiative to tighten up on rooming house regulations will force people on to the street.Paul Saroya said he is selling off two or three of his homes because he knows it will cost too much for the necessary upgrades."I've been trying to get rid of (them) for the past four years," said Saroya of his properties, where at least 10 people are living.
The fire department recently handed over a list of about 50 houses to the city, detailing places they suspect of being rooming houses. The province estimates there could be as many as 150 in Nanaimo.There is currently no zoning for rooming houses in Nanaimo and many of them are unsafe and don't comply with fire regulations.Rooming houses are defined as those where renters occupy a single room and share cooking facilities, bathroom and common areas.Nanaimo social planner John Horn said many of the rooming houses are in the downtown core. Most are large, turn-of-the-century homes, cut up into different sections without building permits.The city says because rooming houses have gone unregulated for so long, some of the living conditions people are faced with are deplorable. Many of the people living in rooming houses are on social assistance.Saroya predicts most property owners will sell or decommission their units, instead of spending thousands on upgrades."If they spend $50,000, how are they going to charge $375 per month?" Saroya said."The owner will sell it and get rid of it," he said. "Who is it going to affect? The tenant."It's going to have a big-time effect. I don't know how (the city) is going to tackle that."Saroya said the city should encourage affordable housing development by waiving property taxes for up to five years."I think it's a good idea to give them a really good break," he said.MTropea@nanaimodailynews.com250-729-4255

This article in today's paper bothers me on so many levels that I don't even know where to begin. First of all, the Council is cracking down on these derelict rooming houses NOW because in order to put in their wet housing project, all the i's must be dotted and t's crossed. Rooming houses must be legal if the city is going to pay people to get high in your neighbourhood. Hence the regulating of said rooming houses. Second of all, if it weren't for their thinly veiled motives(I am still waiting for an answer to my letter in this regards, Mayor and Council, City Social Planner), should ANY housing be unregulated? Just because someone is poor doesn't mean they should live in the condition that some of these rooming houses are in...and the neighbours should not be subjected to their deplorable conditions, either, without any power of recourse against the slumlords. Third, the landlord/property owner they are quoting? You all remember who that is, don't you? He owns this and this, as well as several other "notorious" properties in the southend. And as if this even touches on the fourth, the fifth or sixth things that irritate me about this article....but you all know how I can go on and on and on....and on....and on....
So this is the letter I wrote to the reporter....

Martha Tropea,
Most of this neighbourhood will stand on the street and applaud the day Paul Saroya sells his holdings and gets out. It couldn't happen soon enough.
His quotes make him sound like a decent sort of person, though he has preyed on his tenants for years, as well as on Nanaimo. He is no friend of the poor, no friend of the homeowners here, and no friend to Nanaimo.
He has been threatening in manner, in actions and in with his words in more than one occurance with neighbours here, and with his own tenants.
His properties are disgracefully unkempt and, in all likelihood, dangerously unsafe.
We have to use the Nuisance ByLaws on more than one of his properties in order to have Mr. Saroya even maintain the most minimal of standards. He doesn't provide outside rubbish bins so his tenants' garbage just collects on the side of building, feeding rats, raccoons, feral cats and other pests and spreading over the street in the wind.
The front stairs on one of his rooming house properties are falling apart, with nothing left of the railings or hand support and he does nothing to address it.
He was nearly thrown in jail by the City for his refusal to install fire safety measures in that same building.
Many of his properties are, or have been recently, crackhouses. Everyone in this neighbourhood has had the displeasure of dealing with open drug dealing, open drug use, fights, threats, etc. from his properties at one time or another...mostly all the time.
If setting a minimal decent standard of living is what it takes to rid the neighbourhood of the likes of Paul Saroya, then I say, let the people live in decent standards. Is that so wrong?

Sincerely,
Dilling