Landlords Are Not Slumlords

Media Section Of The Council Meeting

For one of our Journalism assignments we had to go to a municipal meeting and write a story on it. Now due to the hurricane and then the snow storm, every meeting I had planned to go to ended up being cancelled. With a few days left before the deadline was upon me, I went to one on Wednesday 14th. Luckily for me, this ended up being arguably the biggest meeting of the year with protesters littering the streets armed with signs, stickers, american flags, and megaphones. It appeared that the local people were a little unhappy with the Mayor of New Britain. To say it was crazy is an understatement. Police blocked the street and guarded the entrance. After telling them we were student Journalists we were allowed in. Inside the building was heaving with people whom I struggled to navigate my way through. The girl I was with happened to be about 5ft tall and her ability to duck and weave amongst the crowd was unbelievable, I struggled to keep up. Because we were busy interviewing outside, we missed the beginning and weren't allowed upstairs due to overcrowding. After talking to the police we were escorted upstairs and was snuck into the meeting room and sat with all the media.  I have attached my article below with some pictures taken with my phone.

Landlords Are Not Slumlords

Townspeople of New Britain flooded to the town council meeting on Wednesday 14^th November to protest against a new license to Landlords in the area, and a fee for multiple police responses throughout the year.

Protests began early in the evening from enraged locals as they collected outside city hall armed with banners, flyers, signs, and a megaphone to express their displeasure at the recently passed ordinances.

The owner of family business Atamo’s was unhappy at the increase in taxes, “I don’t rent out any space, but if this is the way things are heading, surly it won’t be long until they put the taxes up on business properties.”

Local business owners will find that these new laws will freeze economic development in the city and business will suffer.

The Chamber room within the town hall was full to the brim, with people stood around the periphery and even more held in the corridor downstairs to prevent overcrowding.

What the people were protesting are the laws that will require landlords to pay an annual fee of $150 per unit and a $250 penalty for each day the fee is not paid. They are also agitated as ‘hot spots 911’ will force a fee for each response by police that exceeds a pre-determined number.

One landlady stood up and said, “Why are you putting all the landlords in the same boat? I don’t live in a bad section of town, so I don’t understand why I’m being treated the same. I feel targeted and insulted.”

Landlords will notice a loss of equity in their property and the rental property will be devalued. A New Britain landlord who lives in Berlin said the following, “I don’t rent out my house in New Britain for profit; I don’t make a penny. I keep the rent low to get people in for the long term and wait for the equity to build up so when I sell, I’ll have a nice little nest egg. The forced increase in rent may make it hard for me to find a reliable, long term tenant.”

Many tenants were complaining that they couldn’t afford the increase in rent as their

expendable income is low enough as it is. Chants of, ‘The Shelter cannot take anymore’ were heard outside of the city hall as billboards saying ‘Where will I go if I have to move?’ were held aloft.

Landlord Sam Zurker confronted Mayor O’Brian claiming that, “The slumlord of New Britain is the city of New Britain. The Mayor is targeting one of two essential aspects of life. The two are housing and food. He’s making it so that we cannot afford food because the price of rent is going through the roof.”

The threat of fines for police callouts worries the local people as they feel that crime is a problem at the moment, and such a move would only increase it further. Numerous signs saying, ‘The streets are not safe now. What will they be like if you can’t call 911?’ were spotted amongst the protesters as calls for the Mayor to resign were shouted from the masses.

Re-election for Mayor is not until November 2013, but voters are already looking to go elsewhere as they look forward to having the power to vote Tim O’Brian out of office.

                                                

Video Footage - http://a.yfrog.com/img526/6881/1zmxctadgzdeancbsgidle.mp4