Tighter rent thaw regulations opposed

Press, 7 April 1984, Page 9

Tighter rent thaw regulations opposed

By tightening the rent thaw regulations the Government would stir up illfeeling between landlord and tenant to the benefit of neither, according to the Canterbury Property Investors’ Federation.

The warning was issued by the association’s president, Mr Jim Glass, yesterday.- .. . .

He was responding to submissions presented by the Christchurch Tenant’s Protection Association to the Housing Corporation this week calling for reforms to safeguard tenants against illegal rent rises and retaliatory eviction.

Mr Glass said that landlords were alarmed by the changes that the T.P.A. was lobbying for and that, if

they were introduced, more would leave the business, aggravating an alreadygrowing shortage in rental housing. To make the regulations more stringent would be absurb, he said. If anyone was suffering under them it was landlords, not tenants.

He was also concerned that the submissions the T.P.A. had made might appeal to the Labour Party as it prepared to fight this year’s General Election.

“The Government should keep its hands off and let the market function,” he said. In the late 1970 s there had been a surplus of flats in Christchurch and rents had stayed still.

They were just beginning to rise when the freeze was imposed and had yet to catch up with the going rates in other main centres. All this meant that the controls in place allowed no margin for maintenance.

Mr Glass quoted the example of a block of four modern two-bedroom flats in St Albans where the rent had been held at $35 a week from 1976 and the landlord was permitted an increase of only $1.05. Landlords had still “to get through to next February,” he said, and the pressure was building up. Any tightening of the regulations would therefore be “damned alarming.”