RENTS OF PENSIONERS’ COTTAGES

Press, Volume LXXXVI, Issue 26187, 10 August 1950, Page 2

RENTS OF PENSIONERS’ COTTAGES

Sir, —I have been wondering when the new City Council comes in if it will be fairer-minded than the old one. If the council could not raise all the rents of the pensioners’ cottages they should not have raised any. The position is most unfair and should not exist. It’s so unfair it hurts, and hurts bard, and does not make for contentment among the old people, with one paying £6 a year more rent than his next-door neighbour for an exactly similar cottage. With tea at 6s per lb and prices of everything going skywards, all the time, it makes things rather difficult. Hoping that when the new couhcil comes in it will have a better sense of fairness, and will right the wrong and treat us all alike.— Yours, etc.. August 1, 1950. FAIR PLAY. [“I have several times made public explanations of the position regarding these cottages, and I hope this wMI be the last," said the Mayor (Sir Ernest Andrews) when this letter was referred to him. “The original tenants rented their cottages at 10s a week for a single unit and 12s 6d for a double unit. Those cottages were built for £4OO a unit. Recently built ones have cost twice that amount, and to-day they would cost even more. Pensioners have been charged only 2s 6d a week extra to meet this additional cost. Rents at 12s 6d and 15s a week do not oay the council, and as the cottages are built out of loan money, even the rents now being charged will not meet the costs. The council has a list of several hundred pensioners waiting for these cottages.”]