Real Estate Editorial

I must be clear This is my Opinion only and statements made are based on pure frustration with the Canadian and Provincial governments! Will this crap ever change? (Sponsorship Scandal, Airbus, Brian Mulroney, The billion dollar boondoggle, Shawinigate, Shall I go on?) Please correct me if I’m wrong, but really if I’m wrong, doesn’t mean I’m still not mad at the GOVT!

Here in Alberta they recently setup a 7 million dollar Housing crisis fund to help those in need with rapid rent increases and to try to reduce the strain on the housing crisis here in Alberta. The theory was lets help out those people that need a bit of help to sustain or get a place to live.

After only 2 months half of the 7 million dollars has been dished out to people in need (Well some of them are in need). Guess what there is abuse of the system!

Now I realize that we as a society should take the responsibility upon ourselves to not abuse programs such as these, but we all know that isn’t going to happen. It really pisses me off when people take advantage of the system because they can take the governments money. That isn’t the government’s money that is my money, and don’t like when it gets stolen.

Now I can’t put all the blame on society, I mean it’s the government’s program and they screwed up. So this is how the program as far as I know is supposed to work. A landlord writes up a letter stating their tenant owes a certain amount of rent. The letter is given to the tenant, the tenant applies to the crisis fund for money, and the tenant receives a check.

Here are the problems:

The letters by Landlords are Fake, and even the real ones are not being verified by the people running the fund.

The Checks are being made out to the Tenants, not the Landlords, I guess if I got a check for $1200 I could pay my rent, doesn’t mean I have to. The TENANT gets the check!!

There is no consistent follow up to claims made by alleged tenants. Landlords aren’t been contacted after payments are made to see if they received the payment requested by their tenant.

The program doesn’t track who comes in for help. They aren’t asking for id or bank information and nobody really seems to know who is getting this money. I guess I could go in there and get my check every 2 weeks if I so please.

Alright so what does this mean? Well I don’t know but I do know that the public outcry over this matter has opened the eyes of the people running this program. I suspect that either they will scrap it or get an independent company to run it.

To finish up, on the news this morning before I came to work they were again reporting on this story. Apparently lately they are turning down people with proper documentation and people that actually need help, I guess when the lottery is over, it’s over for everyone!