Landlords have rights too
Landlords have rights too
EDITOR:
Regarding the "Take Back the Neighborhood" tenant list, the Warren Urban League should be as concerned about the fair treatment of landlords as it seems to be about undesirable tenants. The majority of the Urban League's constituencies aren't deadbeats at all, and many of their constituents are landlords themselves who are being victimized by these very people. The tax base in Warren is evaporating, as evidenced by the numerous properties that have just been abandoned as landlords are no longer allowed to control their own properties. If you don't have any landlords, no one -- desirable or undesirable -- will have a decent place to live.
Landlords are already unfairly made to pay for deadbeat tenants' utility bills. If a tenant moves out leaving unpaid water bills, Trumbull County Water and Sewer (and I'm guessing some other municipalities may also do likewise) adds these delinquent bills to the landlord's real estate taxes, forcing the landlord to pay them. The county does very little to attempt collection from the tenant as they know they can always "soak" the landlord. How would you like someone else's utility bills added to your real estate taxes?
Having looked on the Internet, I found that federal fair housing law says it is illegal to discriminate against race, color, national origin, sex, family status, or disability. It does not say you have to rent to someone who has a pattern of damaging property, bad credit, illicit drug activity, and has "stiffed" other landlords. If these people now have trouble finding a poor, unsuspecting, tax-paying landlord to rent to them, it's their own fault.
Furthermore, I'm not a lawyer, but I don't think anyone can be held "personally liable" if what they say about someone is the truth -- I think the Constitution guarantees freedom of speech. If indeed, someone can prove they have been wrongly added to this list, the group has already pledged to make its best efforts to find them a suitable landlord and will issue a public apology. I say that's more than fair.
BARBARA ROSIER
Bazetta Township
Raising value of yuan will have trickle-down effect
EDITOR:
I've been reflecting about the Tim Ryan (and others) push to force the Chinese to raise the value of the yuan by as much as 40 percent. First of all I would like to say that the Chinese did not "steal" all the American manufacturing jobs as our politicians are inclined to declare. They were moved there and other places by ruthless flag-waving American corporate investors and speculators who realized they could reduce their costs and gain a competitive edge against other American businesses with the assistance and co-operation of those same politicians. A trickle soon turned into a flood and we have the situation we are living with today.
Those same investors and speculators get exactly what they want out of Washington by investing heavily in election campaigns for the candidates of their choice. In fact the only way to get in the game any more is to be a candidate of their choice. A candidate without the big money backing would not even be considered a serious candidate by the corporate media.
There are some problems with upping the yuan. Let's say it works (and truly it can't) and we salvage a few thousand $30 per hour jobs. The problem is that we have millions of workers who have flooded the service sector making $6 or $7 an hour surviving barely through a patchwork of food stamps and/or discount shopping for cheap goods made in China. Raise the value of the yuan and prices suddenly must take a big jump and these millions of workers will be stranded like the residents of New Orleans in a hurricane with no end in sight.
The truth is we're probably better off the way we are now, but politicians being politicians, China is being put right in the crosshairs of the blame gamers and pressure is being brought to bear to make them raise the value of their currency.
Furthermore the American corporations who are benefiting from their overseas investments at this stage of the game cannot and will not reopen their American plants back in the good old U.S.A. It just won't happen.
ROGER LAFONTAINE
Youngstown