The Crown and Rates

Press, Volume LXXIV, Issue 22413, 28 May 1938, Page 14

The Crown and Rates

The latest local body to be informed of the Inn its within which the Government will accept liability for rates on its new houses is the Waimairi County Council, which on Wednesday night received a letter from the Director of Housing Construction, setting out that the Government will pay rates, pro rata, for the periods during which houses are tenanted. This is not fresh information; but it is information which keeps an injustice fresh in mind. The State, as landlord, limits its rating liability as no other landlord can. This is troublesome to rating authorities, to say no more than that; and it is definitely burdensome to other ratepayers. What the State fails to pay must, in the end. be paid by them. The liability refused, which may be small on individual properties, can become considerable in the aggregate. Figures are already on record which show the losses that local bodies have incurred through the State’s strictly legal default. But the extent of the risk that the Waimairi County Council and other local bodies face and may have to call, on the general body of ratepayers to cover ir just now less in question than the nature of the risk. It originates in the refusal of the State, as landlord, to admit a landlord’s full liability. This refusal has been defended only on the ground that the law, sanctions it and that it would cost a great deal to surrender the exemptions allowed by statute. But a law that authorises the State to leave bills unpaid and, moreover, to leave them for others to pay is one that the State should alter, not exploit. Only one point need be added. If the new housing schemes are being financed bn a basis that allows no margin for ordinary risks, such as loss of rent by default or by vacation of the property, the State cannot fairly plead this in justification of its policy of admitting only a limited rating liability v Other land-

lords must calculate and face such risks. The State should do the same. It has no moral right to call on the general body of ratepayers to carry any part of the risks of its venture into large-scale landlordism.