TENANCIES

Auckland Star, Volume LXXV, Issue 141, 16 June 1944, Page 4

TENANCIES

Re the recent letters under the title "Seldom Used Flats," I. would like to give a tenant's point of view. Both writers make sweeping statements, which include tenants as a whole. This in itself points to the fault being with the landlady and/ not with the tenant, as it is ridiculous to say that no one forced .to seek apartments does not know how to conduct himself. That is where half the trouble lies. Landladies who have this idea will :>ever get on with tenants. 1 have lived for some years in apartment and have been on the whole very lucky with my landladies, but from my experiences I would divide them into three distinct classes—(l) The kindly business-like type, who mind their own business and let their tenants live their own lives; (2) the dictator, who conducts her house with a whip in hand, cracking it at every opportunity and making the tenants' lives a real misery, so that they get one back on her if the opportunity arises; (3) the dear old lady wro reads about the big rents people are paying for rooms and thinks she will cash in. But when the tenants get in she finds things are not just the same, the light and gas bills are much bigger than when she lived alone. There are hundreds of houses in Auckland which have been divided into flats by enterprising men. These places run themselves, and apart from collecting the rent or seeing to repairs, the landlord never goes near. There is never any trouble in these places, and everyone is satisfied. LIVE AND LET LIVE.