Taken from NEWSLETTER OF TENANTS PROTECTION ASSOCIATION (CHCH) INC:

Residential Rentals:

A family business

“I‘m the oldest, longest resident in Hereford Street, I’m the mayor.” Jim Ruscoe has just turned 79. He is one of the best known landlords in the city, with a long history of providing boarding house accommodation in Christchurch. Irreverent, funny, cheeky and sharp Jim Ruscoe starts off by telling us how he arrived in New Zealand with just the clothes he stood up in.

A Bulgarian refugee, Jim arrived 2nd May 1951 from a displaced persons camp in Greece. Paihia, formally a prisoner of war camp for the Japanese was his first home in New Zealand. After a month he was one of several strong young men asked for his name and number and offered work at a Petone mattress factory. Despite a two year contract, five months later a friend talked him into moving to Christchurch where he found work in a biscuit factory. He found accommodation and reported to the Labour Department as required. Soon after he started in the Belfast Freezing Works, an occupation he would have for the next 34 years. During the off season (winter months) he worked at the well known Ferrons Fish Market. Four years later with his wife Hilary he bought his first house in Hereford Street, where he still resides to this day. Jim’s first rental property was in Bangor Street, where his daughter Susan and son-in-law Greg now live.

Working at the Belfast Freezing Works, Jim noticed the racism suffered by some of his Maori co-workers. He would pick them up and drive them to work and many would become tenants in his houses.
Jim worked hard, working every day with two jobs. Jim and Hilary had three children. Jim kept working buying houses both as investments and to house those people who otherwise would have difficulty finding somewhere to live. His reputation grew and before long he was receiving referrals from the Police, Sunnyside Hospital, Templeton Hospital and Prisoners Aid. Jim describes himself as a type of social worker and he even helped some tenants find work at the freezing works.
Working hard is a Ruscoe trait. At the age of twelve his son Michael began working at the freezing works during the school holidays and he brought his first property at the age of 17 years. Michael left school at the age of 15 years and started working at the freezing works full-time as a contract wool puller, working from 6.30am to 11am or 12 noon. In the afternoons, while a large number of his co-workers would be at the pub, Michael would be working on his and his father’s properties and going for the odd surf.

Residential Rentals is very much a family business; son Mike his wife Flavia, daughter Sue and her husband Greg now run the business from their Barbados Street office where they have been operating for the past eight years. They talk about how they had to wrench the business away from the kitchen table of the Hereford Street home. As children, Michael and Sue both had chores to do. On Saturday mornings ten year old Michael would have to bike to each of the ten properties and mow the lawns with a hand mower. Sue would help clean up between tenancies; she remembers cleaning greasy kitchens and finding money and dirty magazines, never really knowing to expect.

Mike and Sue remember the kitchen at Hereford Street as the hub of the business. People would come around to the back door 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, not only to drop off their rent but all their problems as well. They would be having dinner and people would come because they had lost their keys.
The family have seen a lot in their time as landlord; “drunk and mad I took them” , says Jim. Addiction , discrimination against Maori and Pacific Islanders, mental illness—Jim Gregg & Sue Stagg Mike, Hilary and Jim Ruscoe outside their Barbados Office would have them, listen to them and help them where he could (not to mention making sure they paid their rent even if it meant stopping the car in the middle of the road and holding up traffic to accost a tenant for their rent). As long as they were quiet and paid their rent on time, they could stay as long as they wanted. There was one young woman who had suffered a mental breakdown and Jim would collect her from hospital and bring her home to have dinner with the family.

In his life as a landlord he has had his share of problem tenants and has had the distressing job of having to deal with finding some of his tenants dead through various causes. Some of the children of his first tenants are now also tenants.

Jim stopped working at the freezing works at the age of 58, “I put myself into top gear and then went to work full-time for myself, ” he says with a smile. Sue and Mike are obviously very proud of their dad. Hilary on behalf of herself and his other wives pays tribute to him telling us he was a fantastic worker and she really admired him for what he did. The children continue in the spirit he began with - affordable housing with a conscience (not that the Ruscoe's are a soft touch).
Residential Rentals now manages thirty properties, all owned by the family with about 200 tenants. Most tenants stay for a long time. An estimate puts forty percent of their tenants in tenancies for over ten years. Most tenancies are from four to seven years in length with a 40/60 gender split with men predominating. We asked Jim what he thought had changed most about the inner city. He believes it is much harder to find affordable accommodation there. He still sees the same characters and many will stop and say hello in the street. The Ruscoe reputation continues as strong as ever as tenants short of a place to stay keep coming to their door. Mike tells us that one thing that has changed over the past few years is the increased employment rate which has given a lot of these people the opportunity to work in full and part-time employment which is good for self respect. There are still those tenants with addictions, mental health issues etc, but most of the tenants are working, normal functioning member of society. Some who hadn’t worked for years can now find a job. They may have more income, but they will want to live with the Ruscoes because that is where they’ve made their home.