Our response to our landlords

Here's the letter we sent the landlords last week -we just realised we forgot to post it here for all to see - enjoy.

Friday, April 28, 2006

Dear (names omitted to protect the privacy of the landlords)

As tenants of 16 Thomas St, this letter is a response to the “notice to tenants” we received on Monday April 24 2006. This notice was premised on your belief that we have breached our duty as tenants because we “have altered, renovated or added to the premises without the [landlord's] consent” (Section 64(1)(b). The notice continued as follows:

“The loss or damage caused is

The property was lawn from fence to fence with agapanthus along the front fence. The tenants have dug up a large percentage, approximately 70 percent of lawn and put it under intensive permaculture with associated ponds and mulch supply.”

The notice then stated the requirement that we restore the lawns to their original condition and remove the ponds and mulch supply within 14 days of receiving the notice, or that we pay the landlords the sum of $2100.

As we don’t view either of these options as reasonable or desirable for either party, in this letter we want to explore possibilities for working together to resolve this issue in the best way possible for yourselves, ourselves, the property, and future tenants.

After listing several considerations we think are relevant in choosing a course of action, we’d like to put forward two proposals for you to consider and give us your thoughts on. We’d also like to point out that in order to proceed we require your clarification of what the options you’ve given us involve.

Factors We Consider Relevant

(1) Has There Been a Breach of Section 64(1)(b) (Notice point. 10)?

Although this section usually pertains to installing fixtures and related structural modifications (e.g., adding internal doors), we acknowledge that we have altered the premises in developing the garden. We note that we did obtain verbal consent for a vegetable garden and chickens from (name omitted to protect the privacy of the agent) on Tuesday, August 31^st 2004 (although in an email dated 24/08/04 we asked for written permission regarding “getting some chooks for the back yard, to prepare our vege garden bed” as per point 19 in our lease agreement). We also acknowledge that the garden has grown beyond the specified area for which consent was given. To that extent, we acknowledge that we have added to the property without your consent. Specifically, we have added a diversity of food-producing plants and large quantities of soil-improving organic matter. As a consequence the garden is frequented or lived in by thousands of worms, a great many birds, beneficial insects and recently even frogs (a well known environmental indicator of ecological health).

(2) Is the Notice’s Description of the Property’s Original State Accurate (Notice point 11)?

Contrary to the description in the notice, the backyard of the property at lease commencement included a lemon tree, a silky oak, and a bay laurel. There were also two rose bushes, a large flowering shrub we haven’t identified, one jasmine vine struggling after having been mowed over, canna lilies, ornamental ginger, and a “lawn” (comprising of four different varieties of grasses) packed with an array of weeds (some of them useful) such as dandelion, white clover, cleavers, chickweed, dock, nasturtium, thistle, what we believe may be a local native centella species, pokeroot, creeping mallow, mallow, fat hen, wandering dew, and many others we haven’t identified. The lawn on the South Eastern corner of the block (approximately 4 by 10 metres in area) was dead.

(3) Have we Caused Loss or Damage (Notice point 11)?

For us, this question is the crux of the issue. We feel we understand your position and your concern about the attractiveness of the property to future tenants. At the same time, we feel we have a valid point in asking have we really caused a loss or damage? Indeed, in improving the topsoil, the ecological diversity, and the food-producing capability of the property, we feel that there is a very real sense in which we have added value.

In more detail, assuming we have each put in an hour per day for the two years we’ve been here, this amounts to over 2000 hours of labour we have spent getting the property to where it is today. This is not to mention the thousands of dollars worth of plants we have put in the ground. A list of the plant varieties we are growing here is attached, and we would love to show you around the garden and to provide any additional information about specific plants. Non-financially speaking the garden has brought enjoyment, inspiration, knowledge, food, plants and seeds to both ourselves and hundreds of people in the community around us.

Based on comments from friends and other visitors as well as our neighbours, we believe that it is realistic to find future tenants who would appreciate the value of what we have added and indeed that this would be an incentive rather than a disincentive to move in.

We believe that this is not merely a difference of opinion between us, but a topical issue of local, national and global significance: should tenants have the right to grow food where they live?

We would be interested to have your feedback on this point, on whether you see where we are coming from, and on whether there might be any possibility of rethinking the value of what we have done. Moreover, we would welcome you to spend an afternoon with us in the garden, where we would be delighted to talk with you about the permaculture systems in place, and to share some of the food that we have been growing on the property.

Are the Options you have given us Reasonable (Notice point. 12)?

We question the appropriateness of the two options you have suggested, namely those of compliance (“returning the lawns to their original condition”) or compensation in the form of $2100.

Option 1: Compliance

The request that we restore the property to its original condition within 14 days of receiving the notice is not a realistic timeframe. If we were to pursue this option, it would take far longer than 14 days. In addition, the last thing we would want to do is destroy our source of food. The garden presently provides a large proportion of our food and enjoyment and we would not live here without it.

Option 2: Compensation

We are also unclear on whether paying the quoted amount would mean we could continue living here with the garden, or whether you would intend to use that money to have the garden removed now. We request that this point is clarified upon your receipt of this letter. Furthermore we view paying a contractor $2100 to “use a mini excavator to remove all vegetation, mulch and plant remains, re-level existing surface, re-sow with grass seed” creating a “large area of bare soil” and “spraying for inevitable weed growth” itself constitutes an amazingly expensive, wasteful, unnecessary and undesirable loss or damage to the property. Such an action may indeed amount to destruction of our personal property, and of products of our time and labour expended on the garden.

Proposals for Your Consideration

Proposal One

“Permaculture (permanent agriculture) is the conscious design and maintenance of agriculturally productive ecosystems which have the diversity, stability, and resilience of natural ecosystems. It is the harmonious integration of landscape and people providing their food, energy, shelter, and other material and non-material needs in a sustainable way. Without permanent agriculture there is no possibility of a stable social order”

(Bill Mollison, co-founder of permaculture).

“What permaculturists are doing is the most important activity that any group is doing on the planet.”

(David Suzuki)

As practitioners of permaculture we are interested in the ongoing value of your property, not only for our own use but for yours and for future tenants. We understand that aspects of the current state of the property may appear undesirable to you; the garden is in a constant state of transition between the relatively empty block we arrived to and the low maintenance productive system that we envisage leaving behind us. However, we have no desire to leave the property any time soon; to the contrary we wish (and have asked) to sign another six-month lease. In that time, while maintaining the house in its current condition we would be able to create a low maintenance garden consisting of perennial trees and shrubs which will not only provide a pleasant visual aesthetic but will also provide food in the form of delicious fruits and herbs.

We propose an ongoing and regular meeting between you the landlords and us the tenants, beginning with a tour of the garden which we have created, which would allow us to provide you with a better insight into what we have planted and why, and allow you to ask questions and give feedback about the garden. From here we would be able to establish a mutually agreeable plan for a long-term, low maintenance and yet food-producing garden based around perennial trees and shrubs. We are happy to volunteer our services in site design and planting, as well as some plant species. We suggest that the amount currently paid to a lawn mowing business is instead allotted to purchasing fruit and nut trees for the property. As each of us has completed a permaculture design course we are qualified to design your garden site for maximum productivity, minimum maintenance, and ecological stability. Finally, as a gesture of goodwill, if you were prepared to collaborate with us on this proposal, we would be more than happy to allocate you a share of the surplus food the garden is currently producing.

Proposal Two

While Proposal One is our preferred outcome, we wish to restate our previous verbal agreement that, should we be unable to reach a consensus as to the value of what we have created so far and the possibility of taking it forward rather than backward, we are prepared to restore the block to its original condition by removing the plants, mulch, and topsoil we have added prior to terminating our tenancy.

We understand that this is our obligation under the Residential Tenancies Act Section 64(2)(a):

(2) Before a tenancy agreement terminates, a tenant who has installed fixtures on or renovated, altered or added to the rented premises (whether or not with the landlord's written consent) must—

(a) restore the premises to the condition they were in immediately before the installation, renovation or addition, fair wear and tear

excepted; or

(b) pay the landlord an amount equal to the reasonable cost of restoring the premises to that condition.

Conclusion and Request for Response

We request a response to this letter, your clarification of option 2, and your thoughts on this proposal by Thursday May 4^th. If we have not heard from you within this time, and until we do hear back from you, we will assume that you have granted an extension to your initial deadline.

With our best regards and our sincere wish that we can work together in reaching a solution satisfactory to all involved,

Cathy Moore

Adrian Wedd

Dan Palmer