Muther Grumble - 09

Issue 9 - December 1972

Landlords

In Muther Grumble 8 I published a short article about my landlord, Mr F Horne. Unfortunately some of the facts got lost. The article gave the impression that the tenants paid £3.50 a week for their half-rooms all the year. In fact, since we are all students, we only live there for 30 weeks of the year: over the Christmas and Easter vacations we only pay £1.75 a week - for the privilege of not living there; and over the summer the house is relet, at £3.50 per tenant - we pay nothing.

I apologise to Mr Horne for any inconvenience caused by the article; also sincere apologies to St Cuthbert's Society, Durham University, for making it necessary to threaten all the tenants in the house with eviction following the article, and for causing the Principal and other officers to waste their time talking to me about it.

I want to make it plain that my action was nothing to do with the other tenants, and that no action should be taken against them. Furthermore I've now left the house. If you're a local, and think your landlord is making too much profit, then by all means fight him; if you're a student, though, think again, the University authorities don't like it.

Muther Grumble is trying to get together as much information as possible on private landlords, and we would be grateful if you could send us any comments on your landlord - good or bad.

Meanwhile, if you are looking for somewhere to live in the Durham area, we do have a list of landlords available in the Muther Grumble office.

And if anyone is interested in squatting, or helping in a campaign to get local councils to do their duty to house everyone decently, then we'd like to hear from you.