PERIODICAL REAPPRAISEMENT OF RENTS.

Evening Post, Volume LXXII, Issue 133, 3 December 1906, Page 8

PERIODICAL REAPPRAISEMENT OF RENTS.

to ijm editoh. Sir, — In a series of aiticle6 which you were kind enough to publish in July, 1905, dealing with the question of land tenure, and advocating a system of life tenancies as baing the most satisfactory both to the State and the tenant, I said thcrs were almost insuperable difficulties in the way of periodical appraisements. The difficulties I had in my mind are well typified by the experience of the Wellington City Council in Tespcct of certain "Pahiatua leaseholds." "Are the Pahiatua leaseholds airanged satisfactorily':" asked Councillor Winder at tho meeting of the council lust evening. Tho Mayor replied that Ihe leaseholders were "wild at their rents being fixsd (as they say) too high." Quite ho. There never was, and never will be, a man but that when his Tent is raised otherwise than in accordance with a. definite ratio arranged at the beginning will be "wild at its being fixed too high," and convinced that an injustice has been done him. That is precisely what will happen with the sixty-six years' leases now proposed by the Government, and eveTy tenant will move heaven and earth to prevent the just augmentation of his rent. It was principally this difficulty, which will prove a tremendous one in practice, which led mo to the principle of life tenancies, where the re-valuation would affect a new tenant only, and no mini would be subject to that detested circumstance of "having his rent raised on him." — I am, etc., A. H. TRUEBRIDGE. Lower Hntt, 30th November, 1906.