Increasing burden of house rents

Sir,

There was a time in the past when house rents in Mysuru were affordable. The scenario has changed unimaginably now and it would cost anywhere between Rs. 15,000 and Rs. 20,000 to rent out a decent accommodation — what with Mysuru rates competing vigorously with Bengaluru. 

Landlords would feel bad, squirm and very apologetically approach their tenants every three/four or several years to raise the rent. And when they did get the raise, it would only be marginal.

Now, to add fuel to the fire, some greedy and unkind landlords are collecting 10% increase in the rent every year. This is  breaking the backs of the unfortunate tenants. 5% raise every year has become the norm in many cases, although income of the tenants remain stagnant for several years.

Tenants are also forced to vacate under some pretext or the other for the landlords to thrive in a demand-supply situation. People with not many resources can only dream of a roof over their heads and their entire life gets economically stunted paying (abnormal) rents. 

We used to hear quite a bit about Rent Controller in the bygone days. Does this office still exist and is it monitoring the exploitation of the tenants by the landlords? The economic status of families here simply cannot be compared with those in Bengaluru et-al and therefore the raise in rent every year should not be more than 3% in a city like ours. Will the authorities look into this please?

– Mubasher Mirza, Bannimantap ‘C’ Layout, 25.2.2019

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This post was published on March 5, 2019 6:01 pm