The Tenants’ Committee issued a statement in which it indicated that “the rent law has become a psychological, social, and legal burden on tenants, instead of being a tool for organization and protection,” and affirmed that “tenants, especially the elderly, do not know today how to act, at a time when they are bombarded with threats, intimidation, and warnings, and they do not understand what is required of them, what their rights and duties are in a country where they have lost even their lives and their retirement pensions and savings, if any, have collapsed. Do they pay? How much do they pay? To whom and on what legal basis? Why are they threatened with eviction or prosecution? Why are warnings and lawsuits raining down on them? Why are notaries public refusing to take deposits from them? Why are clerks in the departments not receiving requests from the committee? Why is there arbitrariness in dealing? If the clerk agrees, he takes the request, and if he does not agree, he refuses to receive it with flimsy excuses? All of this is happening while the Parliament is standing idly by, not taking the initiative to correct the imbalance or fill the gaps, as if the people’s suffering is a secondary detail that does not deserve treatment.”
The committee added that “more dangerous than that is that the Parliamentary Administration and Justice Committee, and its chairman in particular, refuses to receive the tenants’ committee or listen to our concerns, and refuses to open any serious discussion about the rent law, in an unjustified exclusion of a wide segment of citizens. We also note with deep regret the bias of a part of the media, which opens its screens and platforms to landlords only, while the voice representing the tenants is excluded, as if it does not exist, even though the tenant is the weaker, more affected, and more lost party because his rights are threatened.”
The committee stressed that “housing is a basic right, not a privilege, and legislative justice requires a real balance between the rights of the landlord and the rights of the tenant, not a unilateral legislation that places the entire burden on the weaker groups,” considering that “any law that is not clear, complete, and capable of fair application is an unjust law, no matter how good the intentions are.”
The committee also called for “giving priority to the old residential rent file and opening an immediate and serious dialogue with representatives of the tenants to understand the reality of the situation in order to amend the rent law in a way that guarantees clarity, justice, and social protection.”
