Melissa’s Cozy Teacup

I just read on another persons post how she had to send out notices to 72 town home renters that their rent is going up per the owners of the complex. Yes, I know it is their property and technically it is their legal right to do this, but what about moral and economical rights?

What about the rights of renters not to have to worry that the owner of the building will get greedy  and start to raise their rent thinking he/she has the renter over a barrel?

Case in point. I used to work in a tearoom. It was a cute Victorian house run by a cute older lady but she rented the space. She was in this space because she previously had rented a space from someone in the older, historic part of town who got greedy and increased her rent to the point where she could no longer afford to be there after having been there for several years. She decided that when her lease was up she would turn her shop into a tearoom/clothing shop at another location.  Her new location was just around the corner from her old place but since the street traffic was much lighter (read nonexistent) her business could not be sustained and she was forced to close her doors but not until after she had lost everything and I do mean everything, including her life savings.  Basically she had to start over at a time when she should have been enjoying her retirement. As if that wasn’t bad enough, her previous shop location sat empty for an entire year, year and a half while all of this other stuff was going on and it was eventually rented, wait for it…for LESS than her ORIGINAL lease was before her rent hike.

So, the new renter got her old space for less than what she was paying and she lost everything. The part of town this happened in is having issues between owners who only rent the buildings and don’t run a business within them, and those who run businesses and care about that local community.  Not all the buildings are rented, there are some owner occupied buildings but the numbers dwindle all the time.

Why isn’t the city stepping in and doing something before rent is so expensive that no one will be able to afford a shop or restaurant and the whole historic section falls into ruin? Obviously if, as this particular incident showcases, a building owner is somehow able to afford for a building to sit empty, and they do not have a vested interest in the area (it’s just another property) the owners won’t care if many of the shops are empty as is the situation at the present time.

I grew up on the West side of town and I do not want to see it turn into graffiti covered slums, although the owners of the tattoo shop on 21st street ‘decorate’ the outside of their building with graffiti (I refuse to call it art) which I think sends a certain message and makes the community look bad, but that is for another post.

I see homes and businesses for sale all over town and the prices are ridiculously high. Businesses are going under and being sold off and the prices are so high you could never buy them and have a legitimate business and be able to pay the mortgage or taxes. It appears that, by not stepping in and figuring out how to create a situation in which everyone wins and commerce thrives and people can afford to have a decent roof over their heads, the city is condoning  having empty buildings, (fire traps, targets for graffiti, places where homeless and/or partiers can go unchallenged) condoning price gouging, (unnecessarily high rents so that people who want to own a business aren’t able too and hey, the city is missing out on extra tax money from revenue), condoning a vagrant mentality by not making a certain percentage of building owners in that area run a business on that site so they feel a connection to that community besides the one in their wallet.

If people feel connected to an area, they are more likely to be active in preserving it, but if they only  go to that area once and a while to give the new shop owner a set of keys and they get sent a check in the mail once a month, they are not invested emotionally and would most likely move on to another spot if the economy suddenly fell off in that area. Why not? It’s not as if they are raising children there or have to walk down the street at night after closing up shop or be inundated with transients and other questionable persons who come into the store(shoplifters, etc.).

So, let’s become emotionally committed and not so greedy. Let’s build a community and not JUST a business. Instead of being landlords, let’s be stewards of the land, and people, and build places worth our time and effort and stop looking at everything for what we can get out of it and what sort of bottom line it could create.