Landlordie McLandlordface and How to Deal With Them. Louis Shalako.

1064 Brenchley, vacant since June 2023.

Louis Shalako

Landlordie McLandlordface and How to Deal With Them.

I was talking to a friend about the building across the street, vacant since June '23. She told me once a building had been vacant for 12 months, rent control no longer applies and the landlord can charge what they want. I would like to know the source of this information, or is it a misreading, a rumour, or merely a supposition.

"These provisions only apply during the period that begins on the date the landlord gave the tenant the notice and ends one year after the former tenant moves out of the unit."

This is right down near the bottom of the page, written in the usual legalese. Also, with no visible activity from contractors on site, it seems more likely the landlord is in financial troubles, what with high interest rates and a labour shortage. 

(See link below. - ed.)

It can only go on for so long before some Canadian journalist notices. At some point, any rational landlord unable to complete such a project would put up a 'for sale' sign.

My reading of the text indicates that there are only so many eligible relatives available to the landlord in the N-12 eviction. A second cousin, thrice-removed, does not qualify. And MillDon, recently spun off from Steeves & Rozema, has 1,050 units in buildings across southern Ontario.

I probably have more cousins than you do.

The situation is this. We have 150 people, men, women and children, living in a tent encampment at Rainbow Park. We have a 34-unit walkup at 1064 Brenchley Ave, sitting empty since June 1/23. And if every single person renovicted on that date had simply filed an N-5 notice of intent, the law clearly states that they have the right to re-occupy their unit, at the old rate, (presumably subject to regular rental increases based on the rate of inflation and Province of Ontario rulings), and yet we have some sense that other factors, financing, may also be in play. Yet the law is clear enough. Who in the hell is there to enforce that law, remains unclear.

It sure as hell ain't going to be Sarnia Police Chief Derek Davis and Sarnia Police Services. They're overstretched, underpaid, short-staffed, and wondering how in the hell they're going to get another 17 % budget increase this year, what with the city paying $122,000.00 per month for porta-Johnnies down at Rainbow Park, which, when you think about, might have gone a long way in making mortgage payments on some kind of a building somewhere...

#Louis

Get yourself a good, old-fashioned lawyer.

***

If every single tenant evicted had filed an N-5 form, the landlord is essentially fucked.

Game over. Think about it. They renovict 34 households, making millions in ‘investment’, so that they can ‘safely’ make necessary repairs and upgrades to the building, and then, every single tenant comes home to reoccupy their old unit, at more or less the same old price.

This is the sort of information Doug Ford and his droogs do not want you to have.

Sarnia City Councilor Dill Bennis would have us believe that the folks at the encampment are all born criminals, drug addicts, pedophiles, robbers, transvestites, sex workers, mother-stabbers and father-rapers, arsonists and highwaymen, and Apaches, and just plain shirkers, lazy cunts and no-good layabouts, ladies and gentlemen.

He used to be a realtor, but by his own account, gave up a $500,000.00 per year job in order to become a city councilor for what, less than forty grand a year. I'm not too interested in the so-called gentleman's opinion.

To hear his words on the radio, Cool 106.3, “I don’t care about these people,” was not exactly a revelation. Just for the record, on-air content must be logged on a 24/7/365 basis and submitted to the CRTC, the Canadian Radio and Television Commission. His words are on the permanent historical record of this nation.

I reckon poor old Bill has quite a list of people he doesn't care about. Perhaps he will tell us what, or who, or whom, he actually does care about, hopefully at some point in the future, perhaps before the election, which he plans to win, assuming not too many folks actually turn up to vote...in the meantime, it's a bit of a secret, but open to speculation.

And in the unlikely case that your second cousin, thrice removed, needed an apartment, in the N-12 eviction scenario, while they recovered from a heroin addiction, learned to play the drums, got back on their feet and went back to school to learn aromatherapy for assholes and ear-candling, and neuro-linguistic programming, why in the hell would they ever want to pay $2,149.00 per month for a shit apartment in a three-floor walkup in the central city. It's not like they have any money either.

As for myself, I am not a lawyer, but I can afford one in a pinch, otherwise, talk to the lawyers and paralegals over at Community Legal Assistance Sarnia.

Some of them seem fairly bright.

#Louis

END

Relevant Page from the Landlord Tenant Tribunal. 

No Place to Go: Eviction Story, 1064 Brenchley. (Sarnia Journal)

I, Dill Bennis, Armed With Strong Mayor Powers. 

Dill Bennis Claims Homeless Being Bussed in to Rainbow Park. (Presumably, to cause problems for Dill Bennis.)

Louis Shalako has books and stories available from Amazon.

He also seems fairly bright...

Thank you for reading.

 

 

Not In My Back Yard: the Cure for NIMBYism. Louis Shalako.

Affordable housing in Vienna.

 

Louis Shalako

One of the greatest challenges to building affordable, geared-to-income housing is NIMBYism.

People are all for it, of course, they agree on the need for it. With one proviso—‘not in my backyard’. They fear it will affect the character of a neighbourhood. Even though that neighbourhood might not have much character to begin with. They fear it will bring down the value of their own property, and as it turns out, family values turn out to be mostly about property values. If you tried to put such a thing in the south end of this town, right beside the railroad tracks, people on fucking Campbell Street would object to it for all the usual reasons. Most of which have more to do with ignorance and prejudice than any great regard for the facts. As far as the south Christina St. neighbourhood, it would actually tend to raise the tone of the neighbourhood, and they would still object to it. In their mind, it’s better for the county to pay $60,000.00 per year to house an unhoused person in a motel out on London Line. Where there are no services for all the #mental_health_addictions you folks keep on ranting and raving about.

Someone, after all, is getting something for free, even though the same people will tell you there is no such thing as a free lunch.

I have the solution, which of course no politician would ever care to acknowledge, let alone adopt as a serious policy proposal. That’s because they need folks like you to vote for them, and you are afraid of everything that looks like a solution.

I have the cure, ladies and gentlemen.

When a property developer applies for approval for some big new housing development, say a hundred and fifty-four detached homes on London Line here in the Sarnia area for example, ten percent of the land should be designated for affordable, geared-to-income housing. You could put that at the back to block out highway noises, or you can put it along the front to block out highway noises. But. You’re not going to get approval unless the developer agrees to this proviso.

It gets better—and I know some of you are already raising objections, even though what was once farm fields or a golf course and is just off a busy commercial and light industrial roadway, somehow, magically, has character, even though you haven’t actually built it yet.

Proviso number two is oh, so simple, and oh, so effective. Proviso number two is that the affordable, geared-to-income housing must be built first. You are, after all, asking the municipality, and the taxpayers, to pay up front, in order to provide services, including roads, water, sewers, electricity and gas lines in order to heat and light those new homes…homes which haven’t been built yet, and the taxpayers are supposed to accept that this will bring further economic development. Which somehow trickles down, even though it really doesn’t, and somehow, somewhere, somewhere else, somebody else will finally get around to building affordable, geared-to-income housing. Which the provincial government has no interest in doing. County council talks big, but when the chips come down, they will just dedicate another five-year study, even though the last one brought exactly zero conclusions, made no recommendations, and wasn’t even reported in the local media because everyone in local media knew it was bullshit from the get-go, and some of them, at least, may still have a conscience. Even though I rather doubt that, what with living in Twin Lakes and in Bright’s Grove and in the north end of this town. These are the folks that love stories about going down to the riverbank and burning a candle, in order to raise awareness of the need to reduce stigma...

#fuck_off

An unhoused person.

Just think of it: you’ve built your three-floor walk-up, with thirty to fifty units, on a piece of land that might have taken five or six buildings which they call bungalows but are basically monstrosities, with two or three residents, several dogs, a garage full of Harleys, a driveway full of pickup trucks and boats and house trailers. That is what they call character, even though there isn’t a tree or a sidewalk for miles. (Don’t forget, the bougies hate sidewalks even though municipal services need a strip of land beside every street in order to provide such services.)

And when that’s up, and when you’ve built your first detached home, your first townhouse, your first condo development, you get to do what all the big builders do.

They like to put up a big sign out by the road. It says, ‘Starting at $479,000.00’ or whatever the price is.

Here’s where it gets good. When the realtor shows that to a prospect, in order to make full disclosure, they have to tell potential buyers that there is, in fact, an affordable, geared-to-income building not too far away—they might even be able to see it from hundreds of metres away, what with no trees and the fact that it takes a while to fill in such a subdivision.

And if they object, and if they say, “But—but—doesn’t that bring down the price of my property, which I haven’t even bought yet..???

And the answer, of course, is yes, because it actually does bring down the value of the homes. I have always wanted to ask such a person just how much such an affordable, geared-to-income building nearby would actually bring down the value of an existing home—I doubt if they can even do it. I doubt if a Canadian realtor, still more focused on blowing more hot air into what is clearly a bubble, could even do it. A certain kind of person lives in a world where facts don’t matter, for example Sarnia City Councilor Bill Dennis, who quotes Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher and who spends an inordinate amount of time suck-holing around Donald Trump and Ben Shapiro, and yes, a bunch of other creeps on Twitter…well, it’s a free country, or so they say.

***

But, if you feel that strongly about it, you can walk away. You can go down the road to another municipality, one perhaps not quite so committed to equity and social development. One without much character, one without much foresight. One without some kind of a conscience…

The exact same house might cost fifty thousand dollars more—a good chunk of money, almost enough for his and hers matching Harleys, although it don’t buy much of a speedboat these days. So, ladies and gentlemen, you’re saving fifty grand right off the top. Your mortgage payments will be consequently lower. Due to slightly higher density, there is in fact a greater chance that the municipality will be encouraged to plant those trees, create those community amenities, those parks, and yes, those sidewalks. Hell, they might even put in a nice new school or something.

Interestingly, the affordable, geared-to-income housing would be professionally managed, and would provide rents (subsidized based on need), for the life of the building. Detached homes are sold, not rented. Once you’ve made your money, that’s it—it’s time to move on and grab some more farmland, buy up some old golf course that wasn’t making money anyways, and do it all over again.

As for the building I live in, the one where I pay rent-controlled but otherwise market rates, the building has been re-mortgaged ten or twelve times in the seventy-five years it has been around. It does provide a stable, predictable to some degree, monthly and yearly income to its owners. 

In that sense, it is more of an asset than a liability.

END

Image (Vienna). By Thomas Ledl - Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=49305377

Louis Shalako has books, stories and audiobooks available from Google Play.

Thank you for reading.

 

Systemic Change Comes Through Political Action. Louis Shalako.

The loneliness must be intense...

Louis Shalako

I saw this guy at the gas bar. Black Chrysler van, loaded with bags, boxes and crates. The exhaust system is shot. The van is dented, dinged and rusting through. A metal shield on the exhaust system is hanging down, scraping the road on every bump. I've seen him before, grabbing ten or twelve black bins at the Beer Store, which he takes out into the parking lot and fills up from other bins and bags, of empties he's collected over his travels.

He may stop in at the food bank, or the soup kitchen, but that driver's seat is where he lives. That is his bed, ladies and gentlemen, that is where he sleeps. With a 27-year waiting list, (only a slight exaggeration – ed.), for geared-to-income housing, and this guy's an older man, one wonders where he parks at night—I have been reliably informed that the Tim Horton's on south Indian Road is locking its doors at night. No walk-ins, only drive-through after ten or eleven at night. This is due to homeless people, getting in from the cold, it's also due to drug overdoses in the bathroom. How long can he keep that thing on the road, and after that, then what?

One wonders where he goes to take a shit, or to take a shower once in a while. And I rather doubt this one has been counted among the local statistics. One wonders how he deals with the hopelessness, the sheer loneliness of his position.

#statistics

Shortly after the 2018 municipal election, county council called for a five-year study of housing affordability. I wonder what sort of nonsense report the Bill Dennis types (an extremely conservative person in his own words) think they can get away with, or are we just supposed to forget.

#fuck_off

The report will focus in on 'leveraging paradigms' and stupid shit like that. Only fools talk like that, and this is a serious problem. 

They are, in the words of Karl Marx, ‘useful fools’, and they do know what is expected of them…they even get paid to do it.

According to news sources, something like 1,300 volunteers had been through the Inn of the Good Shepherd in a recent year, and they were serving 1,700 or more families and individuals per month, in a whole plethora of services. At some point I had to realize, that any asshole can go down there and make soup for the people. I know that sounds cruel. But it really doesn’t take a Rhodes Scholar to make soup, nor a doctor, a lawyer, or any skilled person. It is mostly church groups, service clubs and some of the union locals. The food bank serves some need in them as well, or they wouldn’t do it, would they. Some people make cash donations. Surely there is a surplus of cash out there, somewhere…perhaps it’s a problem of distribution. Maybe it's just a 'supply-chain disruption'.

But the only way to tackle systemic issues is by political means. It is a challenge of communication, not one of handing out food baskets, which are never enough and it doesn't solve the root problem anyways.

Making 'political statements' is something the food bank operators are loathe to do, as is the local news media, for related but different reasons. Non-profits are barred from political activity, although that has never stopped the conservative think-tanks. I recall one conservative government went after some left-wing think-tanks, claiming they were violating their mandate, which some might argue includes a bit of criticism of the social order—and the government stands at the top of that heap, don't they. The food banks don't want to scare off donors, some of whom are very conservative, and the media don't want to lose advertising dollars or have to deal with an inundation of angry letters to the editor. Oddly enough, the government does a fair bit of advertising in local media…

#analysis #Louis

This is why the never-ending food drive is a 'good-news' story about a 'sharing and caring community'. All propaganda, in order to be truly effective, must be based on some truths...and once it is swallowed, and accepted, it becomes 'truth', which is also a bit of a problem around here.

There is no surplus of truth, not in this town, ladies and gentlemen.

After more than forty years of, quite frankly, thoughtless media indoctrination, no one really questions it anymore. 

That, is the challenge of communication.

They have grown up with such stories for their entire lives. It takes great courage to question such an ‘unquestionable’ narrative, and that’s why no one ever does it.

If the local food bank can get 55,000 lbs. of food a month to distribute, the problem is not food. There is clearly surplus food. The problem is one of income. People don't have enough money to buy their own food. Many of those people are working.

Where does the Chamber of Commerce stand on this issue?

Take a wild guess…

More food drives, more charity, more mental-health outreach programs, more free Nalaxone kits handed out in clumps of bushes down on the riverbank...please, please, please, don't do anything that would actually solve this problem, for example raising the minimum wage...or business taxes, or property taxes, or meddling with any other funding stream.

The current welfare and disability regime in this province and this country are ludicrously underfunded. Always have been, always will be.

Nothing is ever going to change until we change.

And change, my friend, is hard.

 

END

Image: Morguefile.

Note. The passages highlighted in blue are from Facebook comments. The main text was pieced together in Fb posts. I tried saving as a .txt document, which will often strip out unwanted formatting, but it clearly did not work. - Louis

Louis has books and stories on Google Play.

Thank you for reading.

Louis Shalako Poops On Canadian Food Banks.

Louis Shalako

Some commenter on Youtube was all incensed. He told me I was ‘lucky’ to line up at food banks, and he stated that I was ‘lucky’ to be able to go every ten days, and that ‘most places it’s only once a month’. So I decided, in all fairness, to do some fact-checking.

https://www.foodbank.bc.ca/find-help/how-often-you-can-access-food/

“...on average, in Halifax, you can go once a month”.

So, dickweed maybe had a point to make after all—

HOW OFTEN YOU CAN GO AND WHAT YOU’LL RECEIVE

Each food bank is a little different, but on average you can go once a month, and you’ll receive 3 to 5 days of food per person in your household.

https://www.feednovascotia.ca/find-food/what-to-expect

http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/montreal/hungercount-quebec-food-bank-demand-increase-1.3851019

“Sun Youth assigns one day per month for food distribution to each group. It is strongly recommended to the people concerned that they pick up the products related to their needs on the scheduled day as the availability of some products is dependent upon the donations Sun Youth receives. Senior Day is the first Monday of the month, Kosher Day (day for seniors requiring kosher food) the first Thursday, the Day for pregnant women is the second Tuesday of the month and Magic Day (day of HIV positives) the second Thursday.”

http://sunyouthorg.com/en/services/emergency/food-assistance/#supplement

Hmn. Another once-a-month food bank. Sure hope you’re not on disability. This is the one where you’re paying 70 % of your income, which is thirty or forty percent below the poverty line, in rent. Assuming you have a phone and wear clothes, this leaves $1.25 per day to ‘budget’ for food, according to certain front-page nutritionists, big girls who just like to cook, on a six-month contract and a government grant.

After that, they’ll be back on welfare, living in no-daddy alley, and having no idea that they were basically just conned into making such statements. Still, if it moved a few rutabagas, some corporation somewhere gets a tax credit for their donation of some rotten old produce.

http://www.thrivecyn.ca/directory-of-services/health/food-banks-st-johns-mt-pearl/

Winnipeg: once every two weeks. Bear in mind, larger cities have more than one food bank. 

Locally, our three major food banks have a computer system, which tracks entries and they know when you’ve been to another food bank. If it’s a long weekend, and if you had to work, you were in dialysis, your kid was hit by a car, whatever you do, don’t show up a day early or they’ll give you shit for something.

http://winnipegharvest.org/need-help/need-food/

No details on how often you can go, but they take special note of the ‘gratitude’ and the ‘hope’ when someone gets a box of food.

http://crs-help.ca/foodbank/programs/foodbank/

Yeah, the cocksuckers are hoping to live another 1-3 days without blowing their brains out.

North Bay, Ontario: 1-3 days worth of food, once a month. If that ain’t a solution to poverty, I’d sure as hell like to know what is.

#Ontario_Chamber_of_Commerce

http://foodbank.sofaproduction.ca/need-help/#foodbank-hours

Kenora and District food banks provide 1-3 days food, once a month to every three months...

#national_disgrace

https://www.northwesthealthline.ca/listServices.aspx?id=10572&region=KenoraDistrict

...wow. That is some solution to poverty, ladies and gentlemen.

#local_radio

I’ve often wondered if these guys are as quite as stupid as they make themselves out to be. If these guys had spent half as much time fighting poverty as they have glorifying food banks, something might have actually been done about it by now.

Another good-news, heartwarming story from Canadian Journalism.

#fuck

Temporary Food Bank still going strong after 25 years.

http://www.simcoereformer.ca/2016/03/09/food-bank-going-strong-after-25-years?utm_source=addThis&utm_medium=addthis_button_facebook&utm_campaign=Food+bank+going+strong+after+25+years+%7C+Simcoe+Reformer#.Wn9m9rs9JIA.facebook

SOME OF THE BEST FOOD BANKS IN THE WORLD ARE IN SOUTHERN ONTARIO!!!

#Ontario_Chamber_of_Commerce

Five fucking stars in the Michelin Review of Canadian Food Banks.

I’m sure.

#Doug_Ford

Yeah, that 1-3 days of food from a Canadian food bank sure makes up for a lot—like the missing $1,000.00/month from your disability pension. You know, considering the poverty line in this country is $20-22,000.00/year and everything.

#fuck_off

Oh, boy, look at all those lovely food banks. This is a good link, I know that because it’s posted by the fucking Health Department.

#Canadian_Journalism

https://www.eriestclairhealthline.ca/listServicesDetailed.aspx?id=10572&region=ChathamKent

...fuck, they’re working their asses off, institutionalizing it...I hear Doug Ford wants to set up a Ministry of Food Security, and rationalize it, perhaps even privatize it. Then some Toronto Sun commenters get to decide who is deserving poor and who isn’t.

#fuck

https://www.thefoodbank.ca/

Yeah...look at all that hope, ladies and gentlemen.

#joy_to_the_fucking_world

No word on how often you can go, but three day’s worth of food from the Salivation Army in Windsor.

#fuck

https://windsoressex.cioc.ca/record/WIN1190


END

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