Landlady demanded CHF 1,100 from tenant on social benefits for two small rooms

It has become known that a 31-year-old tenant had been paying as much as CHF 1,100 for two small rooms in a multi-family dwelling unit in Baar. Fortunately, he has since been able to find alternative accommodation.

The tenant actually moved out at the end of March and he was very glad to be able to do so. The accommodation he had been living in comprised of two rooms amounting to 25 square metres, his having to share bathroom, toilet and shower facilities with between 20 and 25 other men and women at this building near the motorway in Baar, and where the entrance hall was strewn with foliage and plastic litter. The contract the tenant had signed last year was one with the Astoria Immobilien AG property company.

When a journalist of the Sunday edition of the Zuger Zeitung looked up the firm in the Registry of Companies, he was not able to find a landline nor a mobile telephone number of the company concerned; neither was there a website nor an e-mail address. However, there was one name mentioned, that of the sole member of the board, a woman, whom he duly tried to contact through her private telephone number, and with success.

However, she was unwilling to talk about the high rent she charged at these premises in Baar. One day later, an e-mail arrived at the offices of the newspaper purporting to come from someone close to the landlady, who warned the journalist not to call her again. “We owe you nothing and are not obliged to provide you with any information,” it said.

The journalist then informed the appropriate department at the authorities in Baar, who responded in writing that, even in the case of tenants on social benefits, such contracts are a matter for the tenant and landlord alone, the Social Service department merely checking that the rent did not exceed a certain limit. And at CHF 1,100 it did not, though this was the very upper limit permitted.

This article is based on one by Thomas Heer.