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Dainty WORLD | §

ENERGY CRISIS

‘
rahi

Public backs DERA
campaign for funds

A campaign to raise $22,000 to
cover the wages of two community
workers for the Downtown East-
side Residents Association has
been launched by a number of
prominent community activists.
Rev. Art Griffin of the First United
Church Staff Team, spokesman for
the 43 concerned individuals and
groups sponsoring the campaign,
announced that the fund-raising
campaign was being initiated in
response to the actions of the
Vancouver city council which has
voted to discontinue funding to
DERA, despite the fact that over 35
briefs were presented to council on
behalf of the east end organization.

In kicking off the campaign,
Rev. Griffin noted that DERA
works in the lowest per capita
income area of the city of Van-
couver and that the organization
has over the years ‘‘encouraged
and often shamed decision makers
into carrying out their own bylaws,
fire regulations, zoning regulations
and liquor act enforcement.

‘We are determined that the

effectiveness of DERA will not be

diminished,”’ Griffin declared.

In addition to the First United
Church, representatives of the
Committee of Progressive Elec-
tors, the Native Information
Centre, the B.C. Federation of

Labor Council and a number of
churches in DERA’s constituency
have endorsed the campaign.

Alderman Harry Rankin,
DERA’s most consistent supporter
on city council, and the mover of
the motion which would have
continued city funding of DERA,
warned that the campaign to raise
money to continue the
organization’s work should not be
seen as freeing the city from its
responsibility to provide funds for
DERA. Rankin said that the fund-
raising campaign should be used
as another means of bringing
pressure to bear upon city council
to reinstate city funding for the
organization.

Griffin said that all donations
would be tax deductible and that
they should be sent to the Down-
town Eastside Residents
Association Workers’ Salaries
Fund, c/o DERA, 616 East Cordova
Street, Vancouver, B.C. V6A 1L9.

‘HOT’ PRODUCTS

The B.C.. Federation of Labor
has issued a ‘‘hot’’ against Skyway
Luggage Company, where the
Upholsterers International Union
is on strike. The 100 workers have
been on strike since April 5. Base

$2.84 an hour.

Tenants call for action

By ALD. HARRY RANKIN

The Standards of Maintenance
bylaw must be strictly and
vigorously enforced. This is the
demand made recently to city
council by Vancouver’s four active
tenant groups united in the Van-
couver Tenant Federation. The
bylaw in question requires that all
dwellings in the city be maintained
in a safe, clean condition fit. for
human habitation. Under the
bylaw the city also has the
authority to undertake this work at
the owner’s expense should he
refuse to comply. ~

The spokesman for the four
groups — Bruce Yorke of the
Vancouver Tenants Council, Bruce
Eriksen of the Downtown Eastside
Residents’ Association, Doug
Laalo of the Grandview Tenants
Association and Bill Bargeman of
the Renters United For Secure
Housing — called for enforcement
of the bylaw as ‘“‘the first step
toward improving the housing
crisis in Vancouver.”

They pointed out that some
tenants live in rooms that have
broken plaster falling from the
ceiling, broken windows, are in-
fested with vermin, have plumbing
problems and generally kept in a
state of disrepair. Tenants who
have requested repairs have often
been harassed, threatened with
eviction and sometimes actually
evicted.

The tenant spokesmen also point
out that many housing units are
being left unoccupied and in a state
of disrepair by landlords when they
could and should be repaired and
used to ease the housing crisis.
They emphasize that they are not
interested in fining landlords for
failure to comply with the bylaws,
what they want is the city to step in
and repair premises at the owner’s
expense if necessary so they will be
suitable for occupation.

d Enforce housing bylaw

Specifically they propose:

1. The Standards of Main-
tenance bylaw be strictly enforced.

2. Removal of the sections of the
bylaw which call for fines when
landlords fail to comply, replacing
it with sections that will ensure
prompt and effective action by the
city to upgrade the premises at the
owner’s. expense.

3. Where residential and com-
mercial premises are combined in
the same building and where the
owner refuses to comply with the
bylaw, the city should withdraw its
commercial licenses to the owners.

4. Copies of the Standards of
Maintenance bylaw to be posted in
a conspicuous place in all rented
dwellings in the city.

5. The provincial government
should give the full protection of
the Landlord and Tenant Act to any

tenants who are harassed or ~

threatened with eviction when they
ask for repairs.

6. The provincial government
should stop landlords from using
catch-up repair costs as
“renovation,”’ using this as an
excuse to raise rents still further.

“Vancouver didn’t have to have
a shopping crisis to justify the

Granville Mall or Gastown,” the‘

tenant spokesmen pointed out.
“We didn’t have to have an en-
tertainment crisis before we got
the Orpheum. But we do have a
housing crisis. The Vancouver
Tenant Federation is demanding
that council enforce the Standards
of Maintenance bylaw with the
same spirit it used on these non-
crisis projects.”

In Vancouver today the average

‘price of a home is somewhere

between $71,000 and $89,000. Only
one rental unit out of every 1,000 is
vacant. Single rooms without bath
in the downtown eastside area cost
$100 per month. Eight per cent of
houses for rent cost over $350 a
month.

Reverend Art Griffin outlined plans for the fund-raising campaign for
rate at the luggage company is the Downtown Eastside Residents Association at a press conference

Friday. (See stor

cause or what tax concessions they arrange in return for
such spending.
From their ministerial apologists of course, we get

Two weeks ago a vast shipment of Chilean apples
other fruits were being spread on display in almost € f
B.C. store, large or small. It may be noted just for ©

Enforcement of the Standards
Maintenance bylaw would not onl
create much better housing.
would also create many hundreds
of more units when applied
buildings at present unoccupie)

Some 54 per cent of Vancouvél
citizens are new tenants. Any cill
council that refuses to act on thel
needs better think twice. TH
November 17 municipal electio®
are only six months off.

—

|
witks
‘You want the regular
expensive, or.the super
expensive?’

‘End transit |
log jam’ —Ci

The Vancouver Region of the
Communist Party has called fo!
the establishment of a mass rap!
transit system for Greater V@!
couver.

A resolution, passed at the Parl
Regional convention: May 2, a
that a “log jam” caused by lack
funding could ‘‘best be broken by!
decisive financial contributl?
from the federal government
was the case with both the Torobl
and Montreal subway.”

Calling upon the fedel!
government to establish a mull,
level Greater Vancouver Rap
Transit Authority, the resolul!
resolved ‘‘that this Authority
charged with the responsibility
starting construction within
years of the key Vancouver-NY
Westminster link.”’ a

It added that the financil
formula should be 50 per cent fr?
the federal government, 35
cent from the provincial gov®)
ment and 15 per cent from "j
profits accruing to the authorilY f
connection with the enhancem™)
of property values adjacent
terminals and routes.”’

Sa

he price of energy goes up and up. There is obviously

no limit as to what the homeowner may be hooked for
now or in the days to come. Gas, oil, electricity — it’s all
the same. He gets rooked sleeping or waking, day and
night. Piled on top of each other the cost is staggering,
with no end in sight.

To add insult to extortion, ministers of the Crown at all
levels offer excuses and condolences, empty political
twaddle aimed at taking the sting out of the heist, but
nothing more.

With the oil barons and their political henchmen the
popular excuse is exploration, to help the oil magnates
find more oil and gas resources, to find new sources of
energy before our present supplies run out, or rather
before the moguls of Wall Street and other centres of the
energy cartel take us for another rooking. They don’t want
to run out of a key resource of fabulous profits!

What we never hear of in this one-sided dialogue on
energy exploration enterprises by the oil barons and their
kind is just what each company spends on this worth

PACIFIC TRIBUNE—MAY 14, 1976—Page 2

tastes.

plenty of statistics running into the millions and even the
billions that their favorite oil or gas magnate spends for
exploration, statistics so contradictory as to be
meaningless . . . as they are intended to be. Just a noisy
cacophony to make John Taxpayer feel that while he is
being scalped at the gas pump, on his heating. oil, on his
kilowatts used up, the energy barons whom he damns
every time they want a new heist, are spending millions
on his and posterity’s behalf.

Given a minimum of common honesty and decency in
government instead of a cheap ministerial press release
delivered with a straight face to hoodwink the public on
new sources of cheap energy, one might expect a little
strict accounting, with some semblance of accuracy in the
figures given. But then that might reveal a corruption slip
showing, and that would never do since the masses of the
rooked might get wise! So, we “grin and bear it” while the
energy barons and their governments wallow in empty
statistics.

* * ** * *

Do you like blood on your fruit intake; apples, grapes
and so forth? If you do then the big food chains and the
Trudeau government have combined with the fascist
military junta which now rules Chile to satisfy your

record that this gesture of amity with the murder)
Chilean military junta had no parallel or precedent du
the three years of the Salvadore Allende govern,
Now however, Ottawa is dealing with a fascist
tatorship much more to its own liking.

This shipment of Chilean fruit is a gross insult to
.peace-loving, democratic people. To the tens.of thous@
of Chilean people languishing in Chilean prisons,
Chilean torture chambers and the countless dea
Chilean patriots, it is an insult only equalled by

depravity.

Editor - MAURICE RUSH
Assistant Editor SEAN GRIFFIN
Business and Circulation Manager — MIKE GIDORA
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