“DON'T WORRY, | HAVE HIM ON A LEASH.”

© 1975 Los Angeles Times Syndicate

_ City council to hear
housing plan June 17

Recommendations from city
council’s standing committee on
housing that $10 million for city
housing be included in the five year
capital plan will go before full
council June 17.

Slated to be put to a referendum
vote some time in October, the five
year plan had initially called for
three million dollars for housing
but was changed as a result of
pressure from the Downtown
Eastside Residents Association
and Alderman Harry Rankin.

DERA president Bruce Eriksen
told the members in an appearance
before the committee that unless
$10 million was included in the plan
for allocation to housing, the one
thousand members of his
association would campaign ac-
tively against passage of the Oc-
tober referendum.

The Commitf@ée of Progressive
Electors also supported the
demand for $10 million adding that

it, too, would campaign against the

referendum if the five-year plan
“did not contain at least the $10
million dollar housing figure.”’

Alderman Rankin told the
meeting, “‘if we can put in 30 to 35
million for parks we can put in 10
million for housing and not a penny
less.”’

He added that 10 million was the
figure for his support of five year
capital plan.

COPE advocated that the money
should go mainly toward
acquisition of land on which the
city could build reasonably priced
accommodation. If the referendum

is passed, the figure will be mat-.

ched by the federal government,

thus doubling the funds ‘available.

HOTEL RESIDENTS DENIED PROTECTION

DERA demands changes
in landlord, tenant Act |

By JEAN SWANSON

About 30 members of the
Downtown Eastside Residents
Association and representatives
from downtown community
organizations picketed in front of
the Legislature last week to
demand that residents of down-
town hotels and rooming houses be
included under the protection of
the Landlord and Tenant Act
immediately. The demand was
given new urgency when on May
30, three days after rentalsman
Barrie Clark announced. that
residents of hotels and rooming
houses were not protected by the
Landlord and Tenant -Act, tenants
of the Victoria House Rooms, 514
Homer St., were given notices that
their rent would in most cases, be
increased by more than 100%.

DERA president Bruce Eriksen
and other eastside representatives
met with the NDP caucus after
their demonstration proposing that
a specific amendment to the
Landlord -and. Tenant Act be
enacted which would protect an
estimated 25,000 residents of B.C.
who are presently denied tenant
rights.

Meanwhile the 63 old age pen-
sioners, mincome and social
assistance recipients who have
lived in their. one room at the
Victoria House for as long as 27
years couldn’t believe there was no
law to protect them. Their. rents
are being raised from $55 per
month to $120 per month in most
cases. They all ask the same
questions: How can I afford to eat?
How can I move with no places to
move to, no transportation, and no
money at the end of the month to
grab a place I might find?

At the NDP caucus in Victoria
attorney-general Alex MacDonald
responded non-committally. -A
committee of Emery Barnes, Gary
Lauk, Harold Steeves and Jim
Gorst listened to the eastside
residents’ proposals in more detail
later inthe day.

Eriksen said the proposed
changes would not hurt. legitimate

hotels which catered to travellers.

Ray Guttridge of Central City
Mission and Lynn Phipps of the
First United Church pointed out
that the exclusion of residents of

hotels and rooming houses from
the provisions of the Landlord and
Tenant Act would gost the
department of human resources
thousands of dollars in rent sub-
sidies.

Meanwhile tenants of the Vic-
toria House Rooms put their
complaints together and petitioned
human resources. minister Norm
Levi for a subsidy of $65 each per
month so they will not have to use
the support portion of their
cheques to pay rent. Candidates for
the Downtown. Community
Resources Board have: also sup-
ported their demand with a similar
petition.

Eriksen said that candidates,

‘tenants, DERA members, and rep-

resentatives of downtown com-
munity organizations want the
government to know it has two
alternatives; It can change the
legislation now to ° .otect these

people, or it can subsidize theif

landlords. In the case of the Vic |
toria House, the landlord subsidy |

could amount to about $48,000 per
year.

at the Victoria House told repor-
ters on June 5 after an unl

satisfactory trip to the office of the |.

Rentalsman pfotesting his rent

A. Begin, a 73-year-old rons

increase that he wouldn’t pay the |
increase. “I'll go up there (the |
Rentalsman’s office) and sleep on |
“It’s 4 7
‘better than what I’ve been sleeping |

his carpet,” said Begin.

”

on

to personally deliver petitions
the attorney-general, the NDP
caucus, and the opposition parties
and to pressure personally the
government to amend the Lan

dlord and Tenant Act to include |

residential tenants of hotels and

rooming houses.
—

Carnegie library set |

for downtown centre

By ALD. HARRY RANKIN

City council’s committee on
community services, of which I am
chairman, has recommended that
the old Carnegie Library be turned
into a multi-use community centre
for the people who live in this area
of the city. And city council has
endorsed our recommendation in
principle.

The Carnegie Library is that fine
old building on the corner of Main
and Hastings: For many years it
served asa library, with the top
floors being used as a museum.

It has been vacant for a long
time. Private developers have had
their eyes on the site and wanted to
tear it down. I’m glad that was
defeated — the building ‘has now
been designated as an historic site.

The people who live in this
section of the city — many of them
poor and elderly — badly need a
community centre. They need a
library and reading room; a place
where they .can play crib or
checkers. The building can also be

used for educational and health
services.

The city’s capital budget already
has a $650,500 appropriation fof
renovating the building: As fof

operating costs, we are awaiting 4 |

report on a division of financi@
responsibility between five groups
that are interested in. acquiring
space in the building — the Library
Board, Community Health Society:
Native Courtworkers Association:
Park Board and Communily
College.

The drive to acquire the Cah

negie Library as a multi-us¢)

cultural centre was spearhead

by the Downtown Eastside
Residents Association and i
tireless president, Bruce Erikse?

There are two very sevefé
problems facing the residents °

this area of the city. One is housing
and the other is loneliness couple?
by the lack of facilities for peop! /
to develop their intellects in

Eriksen flew Monday to Victoria |

environment. :

TOM
McEWEN

re’s a world of difference between throwing the bull
and actual achievement. Not to be outdone by NDP
Premier Barrett’s prowess on the rugby and other
sporting fields, Socredia’s boy wonder Bill Bennett
tightened up the cinches, mounted his bull at a recent
rodeo, and before you could say ride °em cowboy he went
into orbit and the bull headed for the nearest corral.
Unfortunately that happy episode is now ended and Bill is
back throwing the bull instead of the bull throwing him.

Out to defeat the NDP government in the next election
come hell or high water, none of the Opposition parties,
Liberals, Tories and Socreds alike, in their futile efforts to
fabricate a new free enterprise party, show any more
common sense or stability than did Bill when he climbed
on the hurricane deck of a frisky bull. Each in their own
political domain in a veritable shambles from which no
vote of confidence from a gullible following can extricate
him. They have only one thing in common as befits
bourgeois parties with a single-minded monopoly boss —
to be against the NDP government on all counts; to unite
in their daily efforts to slow down and disrupt the NDP
legislature of British Columbia.

In this the Bennets, Andersons, McGeers, ad nauseam,
are all out of the same barrel of monopoly-infested apples,

PACIFIC TRIBUNE—JUNE 13, 1975—Page 2

unprincipled and rotten to the core. Barrett and his NDP
government may yet have a lot to learn about socialism

and how to achieve it, but to this ‘Loyal Opposition” gang
the very word is anathema to themselves and their
paymasters. They are a vest-pocket replica of what the
general and chronic crisis of capitalism is all about.

While tens of thousands of automobile workers thumb
through their social security cards and Unemployment
Insurance, chances in the big auto plants of the U.S. and
Canada, here is a thumbnail sketch of the automobile
industry in the Soviet Union, scalped from the March
edition of the Soviet Weekly.

“Soviet car exports will have almost doubled over the
1971-75 plan period,” reports Vladimir Petrov, president
of Autoexport.’’ Soviet cars, lorries and motorcycles are
now exported to 75 countries,” he writes in Trud. ;

" “In recent years the USSR has exported over a million
cars and more than 2-1/2 million motorcycles, scooters

and bicycles. One of the most popular exports is the ‘Lada’

car from the Togliatti motor works.
“Recently a right-hand drive version became available

for the British market, and sales in Britain -are con- .

sequently mounting. There is a strong demand too for the
Moskvich and Volga cars, and for buses, commercial
vehicles. and tip-lorries.

“Today, vehicle sales occupy a prominent place in the
total volume of Soviet exports.”

Of course under such socialism there is no. unem-
ployment, no tens of thousands, if not millions roaming
the streets looking for the non-existent job, or for a
starvation-welfare handout to survive under capitalist

' Socialism and its (as yet) poor substitute in B

conditions of crisis, simply because there is no criss |

wherereal socialism has become a way of life.

Moreover for the edification of our agents of free & ; 7
terprise as they continue their organized disruption of ™

by lame excuses, fio ripoffs in the food distributing centre 4
in the USSR. In fact, there isn’t one damn thing that eith af

of |

B.C. legislature, there is no inflation, no exorbitant
terest rates or taxes, no housing or health needs sluffed

or all of these.free enterprise yodellers would or C0
approve of. Hence their ignorant and ingrained ha

xa

Columbia. : f
But just let them crawl back into office regardless
partisan labels — then watch premier Barrett’s mors
socialism getting stripped bare — for the greater glo!)
and profit of big business monopoly. No wonder they hav
pipedreams about the return of a Wacky regime al
field day for free enterprise. Pi
Meantime the nitpicking goes on, illustrating all too o
the complete:bankruptcy of capitalism, while in the oth
world gigantic steps are taken daily toward the socialis™
of a new human society. ee

Editor — MAURICE RUSH
Published weekly at Ford Bldg., Mezzanine No. 3,
193 E. Hastings St., Vancouver 4, B.C. Phone 685-8108 —
Business and Circulation Manager, FREDWILSON __,
Subscription Rate: Canada, $6.00 one year; $3.50 for six months: 3
North and South America and Commonwealth countries, $7:

RiBUNeE

All other countries, $8.00 one year
Second class mail.régistration number 1560