XPost: uk.politics.misc, alt.politics.british, uk.politics.parliament
XPost: uk.media, uk.media.newspapers
From: mark.williams@btinternet.com
"oO" wrote in message news:4ee6gkF1e6jigU1@individual.net...
> Controversial landlord is Cameron cash backer
>
> · Firm 'evicted tenants using legal loopholes'
> · It's a politically motivated smear, says tycoon
>
> David Leigh
> Saturday June 3, 2006
> The Guardian
Ho hum, let's see how many holes we ccan punch in this serving of Guardian
tripe.
>
> One of Conservative leader David Cameron's new breed of business backers
> is a millionaire landlord who has been accused of using ruthless tactics
> against tenants. Trevor Pears, 42, whose family owns 15,000 properties, is
> alleged to be driving out small shops in favour of supermarkets and
> forcing out tenants through legal loopholes.
Err, let's go with adjusting their rents to market levels as permitted in
their leases.
> Mr Cameron is trying to boost his party by adopting green themes and
> criticising big business. He has accused supermarkets of using their
> financial muscle to drive small shops out of business. Mr Pears is among
> the property tycoons and hedge fund traders who put up almost £500,000 for
> his leadership campaign. The tycoon has been heavily criticised by small
> shopkeepers in north London, where his firm owns rows of premises in
> Fortess Road, Kentish Town.
And those small shopkeepers are his tenants? Hardly impartial, then.
> Since the firm installed a branch of Sainsbury's last year, locals claim
> small shops have closed amid accusations that the Pears company is raising
> their rents.
Oh dear, isn't that the evil empire, one of whose scions funds the Labour
party? It sounds like the super-efficient Sainsbury's is putting the small
shopkeepers out of business, and other shops that want to be close to
Sainsbury's because of Sainsbury'sr drawing power, thus pushing up the
market rent.
> Patty Collister, whose furniture chain, An Angel At My Table, put its
> shutters up after a 24% rise to £28,000, said: "The landlords showed a
> total lack of social responsibility. In other towns, landlords aren't so
> greedy."
And she is a social worker? No, she is a business woman.
> Tony Douglas-Gooden, whose Natural Health Centre is still trading, had his
> rent increased 55% to £14,000. "The rents are just outrageous. Because
> Sainsbury's can pay the premiums, they think all the other shops can," he
> said.
No, just some of them, but obviously enough to keep the place full. If you
can't stand the heat, get out of the kitchen
> The Green party campaigned against the firm's tactics in last month's
> local elections. Mr Pears said all the allegations were misleading. "This
> sort of politically motivated smearing may be why non-party-aligned
> individuals like myself find David Cameron's approach so refreshing. Since
> the Sainsbury's opening there has only been one unit vacated, and indeed
> one unit relet to a charity shop." The firm was only "charging market rent
> that some shopkeepers do not welcome".
> The Pears empire is estimated to be worth more than £1bn.
Irrelevant, but I gues "estimated" means, we pulled a number out of a hat.
In one year the
> family paid themselves a £42m dividend. But there have been repeated
> complaints about their methods. In 2000, they used what a court called a
> "repugnant" device to try to force out housing benefit tenants along the
> Brighton seafront. The company used the terms of obscure agreements to
> raise rents to an impossible £25,000 a year. It then sought evictions for
> arrears. The appeal court said this was "very serious", and could have
> bankrupted tenants.
But presumably something they were entitled to do under the "obscure
agreements" - the leases perchance?
> A Pears company bought housing blocks the same year from Greenwich
> Hospital, originally an elderly seafarers' charity. Nick Raynsford, Labour
> MP for Greenwich and Woolwich, says the firm exploited its position once
> the property passed out of control of the crown. Rents were raised from
> £50 a week to £190 and many were forced out. Mr Raynsford said: "The Pears
> Group acted in a reprehensible way in their dealings with the elderly
> residents."
So they bought a property from the government? If the government wanted
them to keep the elderly residents they should have put a covenant on the
property, but they didn't because they knew they would get less for the
sale.
> Mr Pears said: " We did in fact attempt to accommodate individuals and
> staged the rental increases over time. We paid the market price in the
> natural expectation of being able to charge the market rent."
Fair enough.
> There were similar complaints in 1996 in Hackney, east London. Residents,
> who included pensioners on housing benefit, said they faced rent increases
> of up to 300%. As flats fell vacant, they were refurbished and bathrooms
> installed. Mr Pears says: "We chose to implement an independently set
> market rent which some tenants did not like."
Dear me, vacant flats are refurbished, fitted with bathrooms and let out at
a market rent. Of course Tony Blair's house in Connaught Square is let out
at a rent substantially below market ... not.
> In 1998 there were more protests in Hampstead, when a Pears firm bought a
> 1930s mansion block and tried to raise rents. "We charge independently set
> market rents and some tenants complain," Mr Pears told the Guardian. "On
> two occasions our managing agent mistakenly demanded rent arrears that
> were not due, for which they apologised."
ibid.
> Last year, after investigating the Pears network of companies, the Office
> of Fair Trading obtained undertakings that they would stop using
> "potentially unfair" contracts for tenants. The Pears Group says it gave
> informal undertakings and cooperated fully with the OFT.
When did you stop beating your wife?
--- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
* Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)
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