BRITISH COLUMBIA

Organized tenants in Vancouver have
targetted 100 of the worst apartment
buildings in a new campaign to clean up
slum housing, the B.C. Tenants Rights
Coalition announced Jan. 20.

The campaign — called Operation
ROACH (Renters Organized Against
Crummy Housing) — officially began
that day when tenant leaders from three
buildings deliverd piles of completed
complaint forms to the head office of Zen
and Aquilini, their landlord.

“This campaign will continue until the
substandard slum housing in this city has
been substantially cleaned up,” said David
Lane, coordinator of the coalition’s
Tenants Rights Action Centre.

Lane, flanked by organizers from four
apartment buildings where tenants have
recently organized, and Downtown East-
side Residents Association organizer Jim
Green, said the housing situation in Van-
couver has worsened since 1979, when a
city planner’s report showed some 40,000
units were below city standards.

Jerry Eberts, who has organized tenants
in his building at 1455 West 8th Ave., said
rent on his one-room suite jumped to $275
from $108 per month last November. Fol-
lowing the formation of the tenants group,
landlord Zen and Aquilini rolled the
increase back to $175. “But that’s still too
much for what I have,” he said.

Rentalsman forms filled out by the
complaining tenants list grievances rang-
ing from torn carpets to stoves not work-
ing and holes in the walls and ceilings of
suites and common areas — and, of
course, the ever present cockroach.

The coalition reported that tenants in
five buildings, mainly owned by Zen and
Aquilini, have filed applications with the
Rentalsman’s office seeking permission to
stop rent payments to their landlord until
repairs are enacted.

Another tactic involves calling in city
inspectors. A section of Vancouver’s
Standards-of-Maintenance bylaw allows
the city to enact repairs if the landlord fails

Tenants group targets 100 buildings

to do so, and charge the cost to the
landlord.

““We’ve had good cooperation from the
city inspectors, as well as (city council’s)
Community Services Committee,’ he
said.

The coalition will use what Lane called
its “organizing building by building, suite
by suite” approach, involving leafletting
and tenants meetings.

While Lane is a full-time coordinator,
paid by the Solidarity Coalition, the centre
also hums ‘with the activity of several
volunteers, many of whom became
acquainted with the tenants coalition
through their organizing efforts. They
help train other tenants in the skills need to
organize their respective buildings, said
Lane.

DERA, a member of the coalition, is
also involved in the campaign. The com-
munity organization has had years of
experience cleaning up the area’s numer-
ous hotels, by painstakingly going suite to
suite getting tenants to petition city hall for

Tenancy Act, have filed complaints result-

action against maintenance bylaws
ms.

The Downtown Eastside’s hotel tenants,

who are not covered by the Residential

ing in 19 city council “show cause” hear-
ings since last January, said Green.

But, he cautioned, slum dwellings are
not confined to the Downtown Eastside.

Lynn Hembroff’s building, at 801-807
East 7th Ave., is a case in point. Holdinga
sheaf of completed complaint forms sev-
eral centimetres thick, she said her build-
ing is only some 16 years old.
_ “Landlords have been sitting on their
investments for the last two or three
years,” Lane explained. “They’ve been let-
ting their buildings deteriorate, and now
the removal of rent controls has com-
pounded the slum conditions in Vancouver.”

The provincial government has with-
drawn its contentious new tenancy legisla-
tion, but a new act*will undoubtedly be
brought down when the legislature
resumes sitting at the end of the month,
said Lane.

_ Angered over the continued presence of pornographic features on Pay TV channels,
demonstrators outside the Vancouver offices of the Canadian Radio-television and
Telecommunications Commission Jan. 18 hit federal Communications Minister Fran-
cis Fox for breaking a promise that the Practice would not be allowed. Demonstrators,
organized by Media Watch, sent their protest to Ottawa via the local CRTC chairman
and called on supporters to withdraw subscriptions to Pay TV service.

Advisory committees
rejected by Coalition

Socred Labor Minister Bob McClel-
land’s mechanism for consultation on
human rights legislation is totally inade-
quate, the B.C. Human Rights Coalition
and the Solidarity Coalition have charged in

‘Tejecting a proposed five-person “advisory _

committee.” —

Both coalitions last week refused to name
Tepresentatives to the committee, which is
to meet in secret and make no reports.

Solidarity Coalition chairman Renate
Shearer charged the government with ignor-

ing the coalition’s recommendation for a

Standing committee of the legislature to

conduct public hearings into new human
Tights legislation.
McClelland’s committee “is not the
Proper way to proceed on such a vital mat-
ter and does not meet the guarantees given
for ‘meaningful consultation,’ ” she charged.
The two-year old B.C. Human Rights
Coalition said Jan. 18 “the ground rules laid
down by the minister for advisory commit-
tee selection are both restrictive and unde-
Mocratic, and will result in inadequate
human rights protection in the province.”
A report by the abolished B.C. Human

Rights Commission following three years of
a province-wide canvass of community and
minority groups contains recommenda-
tions that, if adopted, would give B.C. the
“best human rights legislation in the history
of this province,” the human rights group
stated.

Shearer said the Solidarity Coalition has
given the minister four names to consider
for two positions offered on the five-
member committee “with the statement
that these individuals are not offical repre-
sentatives of the coalition.”

The Solidarity Coalition and the B.C.
Federation of Labor also attacked
Attorney-General Brian Smith’s statements
last week that further cuts to legal aid are
forthcoming.

The Socreds’ new amendments to the
Legal Services Society Act will allow the
Socreds to enact cuts to the service they
were forced to restore last year following a
Supreme Court Decision. 2

B.C. Fed president Art Kube called
Smith’s decision “an extension of the vindi-
ctive, ill-informed cutback mentality revealed
last July.”

‘Only lull before
the storm’, Kube
tells VDLC meet

B.C. Federation of Labor president Art
Kube told unionists Jan. 17 that the current
period was only “the lull before the storm”
and that people would have to mobilize to
fight the Socreds again within only a few
months.

Addressing the Vancouver and District
Labor Council, he warned that further
changes to Workers Compensation could
be expected as well as regressive amend-
ments to the Labor Code that would have a
particular effect on members of the Building
Trades.

“We can’t stand by and let that happen,”
he declared.

Kube had been asked to speak to council
] delegates fol-
lowing the

t __} gency resolu-
ARTKUBE...membersshould tion on teach-
be ready ers’ layoffs.
He reiterated the position taken by the edu-
cation sector committee that because mass
layoffs had not taken place in January as
expected that a decision on job action
would wait until June when the full impact
of the government budget cuts will be felt.

“But that doesn’t mean that the fight-
back is dead,” he said, “it means we have to
go back to the trade union movement to
organize and mobilize and to raise the issues
that are facing us.

“We have to go to the trade union
movement and make sure that our
members are ready when the call goes out
for more rallies and demonstrations.

“And we can’t afford to say we’re tired.
‘We have to go back and do the organizing
job,” he emphasized.

The issues around which unionists and
others can be organized should also be
broadened, said Kube, citing tenants’ rights
and human rights issues, as areas of
attention.

“We also have to start talking about
union organizing,” he added, noting that
the latest report from the provincial Minis-

try of Labor revealed a decline in union
membership.

Recalling the Solidarity campaigns that
began almost immediately after the Socred
budget was brought down July 7, he noted
that there were “both victories and defeats.

“But the only thing that stood in the way
of the Socreds was a united trade union
movement and the Solidarity Coalition,” he
emphasized.

Both have to be maintained to ensure
that there is “a strong extra-parliamentary
force to deal with the government,” he said,
urging unionists. to become active in local
Solidarity coalitions.

“T think the next few months will only be
the lull before the storm” he said, “and we
have to be ready and make sure that the
rank and file are prepared for mobilization.”

What issue it will be that breaks that lull
is still uncertain but for members of Local
389 of the Canadian Union of Public
Employees in North Vancouver, the storm
is already approaching, a local delegate told
the council.

Diane Jolly warned tha
the local faces ¥
major layoffs
of school
board empl-
oyees over
the next few
weeks as a
result of
funding cuts
imposed by
Victoria.

But when Biiaiadl.
thelayofiswere DIANE JOLLY.. layoffs
discussed by ting CUPE
Operation Solidarity, she said, “we were
told that job action would not be taken
unless we could prove that the layoffs were
attributable to money saved during the
strike not being returned to the school board”
she said.

“But we’ve got to do something,” she
told delegates. ““And I hope when we come
to the trade union movement for support,
you will give it — because it is your child-
ren and grandchildren who will
affected.” z

With all the Socred budget-slashing,
“there may be nothing left of the education
system within four years.

“And we can’t stand for that,” she said.

hit-

PACIFIC TRIBUNE, JANUARY 25, 1984 e 3