Re ‘Landlord's concerns' (page 3, The Weekend Sun, April 20).

The tone set by Tony Cranston's words harks back to medieval times when peasants were subsistence farmers on land rented from a wealthy lord or noble.

Workers in Tauranga feel the pinch; we toil to pay rent. There is little help to get into the housing market as it is being driven by a housing shortage created by people such as Mr Cranston owning 13 rental properties.

Someone who owns 13 properties pays no capital gains tax, clearly makes a living off the properties (essentially getting a tax break) who then decides to improve the house only to pass on the costs to the tenant. It's just cruel. We barely earn a living wage.

It's the landlords/owners' responsibility to do these improvements for the good of the people living in them. Stop seeing the houses and tenants as numbers on a spreadsheet but as people who are trying to live.

Mr Cranston should fix his properties for the safety of his tenants. If you can't keep up then sell one of your houses and use the profit to fix the others. It's not going to make much of a difference to your bottom line.

P Reed-Brown, Brookfield (Abridged).