RENTS AND REACTIONS.

Auckland Star, Volume LIV, Issue 47, 24 February 1923, Page 6

RENTS AND REACTIONS.

There is a great deal behind the stormy debate in the House of Commons on the Rent Increase Bill. The immediate subject of debate is important enough. The Rent Restriction Act of 19-JO stated by implication that before rents could be raised notice of termination must be given, but in both England and Scotland this provision was widely neglected in the raising of rents. Towards the end of last year the House of Lords pronounced that all increases of rent collected without notice to quit were illegal, and the "Manchester Guardian" remarks that not since the famous Scottish Churches case has a decision of the Law Lords caused such confusion. In Glasgow the rent so collected was equal to nearly a full year's rent of the houses affected, and the tenants decided to get this money back by the simple process of withholding rent for the l>est part of a year. Now the Government lias come to the assistance of the landlord by making arrears kept back since December Ist recoveri able, and the Labour party is up in arms. Landlords have some cause of I complaint. They were in some cases j actually advised by lawyers that notice jto quit was not necessary, and a pamphlet issued by the Government in I IH2O for the express purpose of making ! the Act intelligible contained no menition of the all-important provision. j There is, however, much more behind the controversy. The whole question of 1 rents and housing is stirring the wageI earning class deeply, and nothing has I done more to increase the strength of i the Labour party in Parliament. If anyone wants to know why Labour swept Glasgow and the West of Scotland at the last election there is no j need to go much further than a report J published in the Glasgow "Medical , I Journal"' conditions in the city. There are 20.000 names on the CorporaIt ion waiting list of persons requiring houses, and some of them have been waiting for years. Over 60 per cent, of the population of Glasgow live in onei apartment or two-apartment houses. The City Medical Officer reports that 13,139 of the existing houses are not reasonably fit for human habitation, and yet over 50,000 people live in them. It is said that there are 1000 one-roomed or two-roomed tenement-houses in each of which three separate families live. The Labour party has won over the voter in the Glasgow slums, and a body of determined men have been sent to Westminster to present with thorough understanding and passionate sympathy the case of the submerged. Housing is going to be a leading issue in British politics.