#871: More substitutes

[Bonobo Conspiracy 0871]

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Bleah. Sick again. I've a pretty good idea why - it's the stress - but precisely for the reasons that I'm stressed, I can't afford to be out of commission for long at this time; so I'm trying to rest as hard as I can over the weekend and see if I can really solidly beat it by next week. I'm holed up in my apartment drinking ginger beer, watching Azumanga Daioh, and doing very little else.

A sign of the times: the management company that runs my apartment building is allowed to increase my rent only once per year, and only by a specified amount which I imagine is determined each year from the official CPI through some complicated formula. The first year (or maybe two, I don't remember just how long I've been here) they didn't increase it at all. Last year they increased it $9 per month, when the legal maximum was about $15. This year, they increased it $10.63: every penny of the legal maximum. I conclude that times are getting tougher and they need all the rent money they can get, enough to suspend their more typical practice of keeping it in round dollars; but the toughness of times is maybe not so accurately reflected in the official indexes, which actually allow less increase this year than last.

#871: More substitutes

Altair: Please take this free holodisc about vegetarianism.
Centauri: Yuck, no thanks.

Altair: It's the galactically responsible lifestyle.

Altair: We have to save the Earthmen for our podlings to abduct.
Centauri: Yeah, I guess.

Centauri: But mutilating a soybean just isn't the same.

Comments

Axel from 65.94.180.240 at Sun, 27 Jan 2008 15:32:19 +0000:
If Ontario rental law is like Quebec's, the permitted increase depends largely on the amount of work done on the building by the owner.

Matt from 69.63.56.135 at Sun, 27 Jan 2008 16:02:28 +0000:
That doesn't seem to be how it works here. I didn't know, but looked it up just now because it seemed like an interesting question, and it turns out that it is indeed based on the Consumer Price Index. There's one percentage announced yearly that applies by default to all rentals in Ontario - it isn't different for different buildings. For 2008, it's 1.4%. Exceptions above the standard percentage limit can be made if the landlord and tenant agree to make an exception although then there's still a (higher) maximum on how much increase they can agree to; if some sort of adjudication board grants an exception; or possibly when the municipality raises property taxes.

niacin from 86.132.162.49 at Mon, 28 Jan 2008 03:41:14 +0000:
They way I look at it the toughness of the times is reflected in the official indexes. Surely the local government should be on the side of the tenants who are struggling to pay their rent rather than allowing landlords to make large increases.

Matt from 216.75.183.177 at Mon, 28 Jan 2008 04:08:28 +0000:
Trouble is, the government itself is the biggest payer of inflation-linked obligations, in the form of social assistance and so on. And the government has the job of figuring how much inflation is. So the government has a strong incentive to lie about inflation: if the formula, for whatever reason, results in a number that is smaller than the real increase in the cost of living, then the government wins.

no-richard from 75.116.144.177 at Mon, 28 Jan 2008 05:53:09 +0000:
"Rest hard."

Right.

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