Righting rents

Regarding Kristian Gravenor’s story on apartment-renting agencies [“Short-term pain,” Oct 24]: hell, having been gouged by a subletter from France, I think it’s perfectly reasonable to rent out short- to mid-term at shocking prices. I also think that anyone subletting their apartment or room for equal or less than the rent in this market is a fool, and is doing both themselves and the community a disservice.

I sublet my place out at a $300 premium above rent because it’s heated, hooked up and furnished. The venomous cow who rented it first alienated the neighbours with her behaviour, then took off six weeks into a four-month lock-tight contract. There’s nothing I can feasibly do about it. Do you think I’m going to try this again? I’d rather let people I know well stay for free.

Who cares if temporary lodging is expensive? It’s less expensive than a comparable hotel room. Usually it’s a company who pays, thus it’s a business expense. It can also be a moving expense, depending on the length of stay, which comes out of your personal income tax. Those people who want to remain in Montreal can find their own apartment, where they can buy the furniture, make the hookups and deal with the legal hassles.

Giuliano D’Andrea was wrong in saying that a tenant needs to ask the landlord’s permission for subletting. They only do if they’re assigning the lease over to the subletter.

This province is stupidly unfriendly towards landlords, who often start out renting small properties such as their basement just to get out of the $12/hour wage-slave economy that people (and taxes) are so dependent on. The province could at least take a small step towards ameliorating the damage they’ve done to small landlords and the rental market by revoking the “illegality” of damage deposits. But with any Régie office (read: all) that’s open from 9 a.m.–4 p.m. with a 12–1 p.m. shutdown for lunch, I highly doubt that’s going to happen. No wonder so many condos are going up while rental units deteriorate. It’s a system that not only makes money, it works.

» Jane Sorensen

Theatre gripes

I was somewhat disturbed to read Mirror theatre critic Amy Barratt’s recent diatribe [“Tower to Hell,” Oct. 24]. Ms. Barratt claimed: “I am often bored by theatre, and fairly frequently cheesed off at having wasted however many minutes of my life watching it.”

Given recent transformations in the Montreal theatre community»namely the replacing or shuffling of Pat Donnelly, Gaëtan Charlebois and Gazette arts editor Lucinda Chodan»one would hope that the Mirror would catch up and give Montrealers what they want: arts journalists who are prepared for the engagements of the 21st century.

Ms. Barratt is stale, uninsightful and ego-maniacal. It is surely time to replace her with a more intelligent breed of critic, at the very least someone who enjoys what they do to earn their keep. Deliberately poisoning the theatre community with disdainful remarks does not serve your publication or the critic any more than it does the individual companies putting their reputation and hard work on the line. Not to mention the spectators, who surely deserve better analysis and insight.

Perhaps in light of Ms. Barratt’s boredom with the medium that thousands of Montrealers enjoy, explore and draw from, it’s time to replace her with someone who is an active player in the scene, and someone who cares about nurturing the theatre instead of constantly dissing it.

» Donovan King, Artistic Facilitator, Optative Theatrical Laboratories

I’d like the theatre-viewing public to be aware that good theatre pieces are not necessarily linear in subject manner or story and that if people try to look from outside of themselves a bit they may see that their own lives have varied greatly over the years. Taking this into context, there should be a greater viewing public for plays like Noah’s Arc 747 [“Splitting Belgrade,” Oct. 17] which, as seen through the eyes of future immigrants to a land of opportunity, deals with the turmoil of life in ex-Yugoslavia in the last decade. That said, what has happened in Yugoslavia can happen anywhere even in countries where there is a freedom of choice and freedom of association.

» Martin Dansky

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