It’s an interesting by-law – and has some obvious flaws that a decent lawyer would prise open. If I had been drafting it, I would have made it two separate rules, so as to make it less like the fine it is clearly intended to be.
In other words, I would have one by-law that says the pass key is the owner or tenant’s responsibility and that any misuse of the pass could lead to it being cancelled.
I would then have another by-law that said owners had to pay X amount for the replacement of the key if it was lost, broken or cancelled. I would also have a system in place to return keys free of charge to people who could prove they were not misused.
The 2 am curfew has no legal basis that i can think of.
There’s been a lot of heat about buildings that have felt compelled to introduce this kind of “draconian” security. But let’s not kid ourselves, if it wasn’t for people trying to make a fast buck by cramming students into flats or letting them out as holiday rentals, or using them as brothels, there would be no need for any this.
Maybe if some of the people running off to Redfern Legal worked WITH the building managers to help clear these scumbags out of apartment blocks, everybody would be better off.
More than half the residents in apartment blocks are tenants. In the inner city, that’s as high as 85 percent in some blocks. Many of the people over-crowding flats and letting them as holiday homes on online agencies like Airbnb are tenants, not owners.
So maybe it’s about time renters stopped portraying themselves an victims and stepped up to help build better communities. Perhaps then nobody would have to put up with this over-the-top security which puts terrible restrictions on ordinary people but, let’s face it, isn’t there for fun.