A Guy’s View: Doing the right thing

Some persons seem to have difficulty deciding between what is right and what is convenient. It may be that one does not know right from wrong in some instances, but convenience is easier to recognise because it is usually in the form of self-interest.

Newspapers rush to print stories of old ladies crying because the houses they occupied have been removed from their spots. It seems obvious that these stories are designed to elicit sympathy and to reflect the heartlessness of landlords and the ineffectiveness of Government policies and officials. How much of this is true may be a question for decision in each case.

Somewhere in the body of those stories, which we may figuratively call the fine print, one will usually see a fleeting few words which state that the tenant refused to pay rent for an extended period and that court orders were ignored. These facts are never given prominence.

It is probably time for the headlines of these stories to read something like, “Tenant who refused to pay rent for ten years evicted”, or “Eviction after Court Orders ignored for years”. These would be a fairer representation of the circumstances of these eviction cases.

Court Marshals do not move in and supervise the tearing down of houses without lawful authority. There is no case where tenants are not given more than their legal protection before this action of last resort is taken.

It cannot be right for a tenant to occupy a landlord’s property and not pay rent. In Barbados, persons are still able to acquire certain property rights by prescription. If a person continues in open unopposed occupation of property for a ten year period, there are steps that may be taken to have that land transferred to the ownership of the occupant. An unpaying occupant should not be taken lightly.

The difficulties suffered by landlords discourage them from entertaining other tenants and keep other persons who become aware of tenant behaviour from opening themselves to similar trouble. The end result is evidenced by the complaint of the Minister of Housing that there are unoccupied house spots while there is a need for housing solutions.

There is an unmistakable trend in Barbados where the letting of apartments in concerned. Many of these properties have come onto the market for sale. What is driving this development? These properties would have been developed as a generator of investment income. At a time when there are few good investment opportunities and the banks are not paying any meaningful interest on moneys held with them, it is a matter of interest that apartment building owners are liquidating their assets.

It is time for an intervention that brings order to our landlord and tenant relationship. A careful look needs to be taken at our local situation and a home-grown solution implemented.

Fairness must be the basis of any such solution. As it stands, the situation is too heavily skewed in favour of tenants. We must recognise that the slumlord legislation which may be necessary in jurisdictions with multi-storey apartment buildings may be entirely wrong for Barbados. The issues faced by tenants here are very different.

It must first be recognised that in many cases the landlords in Barbados are not too far removed financially from their tenants. When the system disadvantages them, it is unfair to persons of the same class as the tenants we claim to be protecting.

For whatever reason, the moneyed class in Barbados has never had an interest in providing housing for Barbadians. They invest in another type of accommodation which does not touch or concern most Barbadians. Housing solutions for Barbadians, therefore, rest with the state and other ordinary Barbadians.

The history of our people has demanded that our Governments pursue socialist policies in order to ameliorate the condition of the vulnerable among us. It is because these efforts are deliberately ameliorative and not corrective that such interventions will perpetually be necessary and will never achieve any permanent change.

The rationale for these interventions is to lend assistance to those most patently needy, but we have seen that apparent need has at times been used as a cover for abuse. It is now time to ask persons to accept responsibility for their own lives and desist from using the state, the press and bleeding hearts to facilitate their wrong behaviour.

It is wrong for the state, whether through its legal system or moral blackmail, to require private citizens to carry the burden of providing unremunerated housing for other people. This is unfair to those landlords who rent a spot, a house or an apartment to augment his or her income. It is also unfair to the social and psychological well-being of the persons who are encouraged to expect that someone owes them a living and that press reports and tears bring houses.

It is totally irrational for a state institution to believe that it should intervene to find a housing solution for a person who occupied another’s property for ten years without paying rent and who has a large extended family living comfortably elsewhere. There is a Latin maxim which says that he who comes to equity must come with clean hands. It is immoral for a tenant to take advantage of a landlord in this way and then be “rescued” by the state at the cost of tax payers. There are persons with genuine needs who would now be unable to access the solution given to that person. My father used to say that too far east is west. Barbados has gone too far in one direction.

Government continues to struggle to find housing solutions when the answer lies in creating the legal framework that would encourage persons to become landlords. The law can easily be amended to make it easier for landlords to recover their properties when tenants breach their contractual arrangements. This can be done without being unfair to good tenants.

Tenants should have to present a letter of recommendation from their last landlord before they move into new premises. This would remind tenants that if they do not respect their landlords’ property or otherwise adhere to their contractual obligations, finding another residence may be challenging.

Government also needs to revisit the provisions of the Tenantries Freehold Purchase Act. Too many poor Barbadians have lost their land which had been earmarked as the inheritance of their children because they rented a few house spots to neighbours. If this outcome were the stated intention of Parliament when this Act was passed, there would have been an uprising against it. This legislation received support because it was promoted as an avenue through which dispossessed Barbadians could escape the scourge of chattel living which made them subject to removal from the plantation lands on which they resided. To apply it to the man who fought and saved every cent he could to purchase a half acre of land is wrong, wrong, wrong.

The answer to our housing needs is not in heaven or under the earth. It is near us. It lies in fairness to landlords.