THE H.B. TRIBUNE WEDNESDAY, JUNE 3, 1936 FAIR RENTS.

Hawke's Bay Tribune, Volume XXVI, Issue 144, 3 June 1936, Page 9

THE H.B. TRIBUNE WEDNESDAY, JUNE 3, 1936 FAIR RENTS.

On another page will be found n summary of the Fair Rents Bill which the Government laid before the House of Representatives yesterday and which is being specially sponsored by the Minister of Justice. The first impression given by it is that it is based upon the assumption, that, as a body, the landlords and landladies of the Dominion have been and still are bent on exacting the most they can extort from their tenants. As the great majority of tenants can themselves probably attest, this is far from being the case, most house-owners having shown themselves as ready to make to their tenants the concessions in rent for which hard times have called. This, too, it may be said has involved very considerable sacrifice on the part of owners, not a few of them nearly as poorly placed financially as the tenants themselves. However, the Government has no doubt iu mind the fewer cases — mostly to be found in the large centres of population—iu which the urgent demand for housing accommodation has been “exploited” at the expense of those seeking it. This gives us only another case where the sins of a few arc visited upon the many.

Iu the next place, it can scarcely be thought that the proposed legislation will be at all likely to encourage the private building of houses to make good the shortage that undoubtedly exists, though perhaps not to the full extent the Government represents. The present Bill certainly exempts from its operation “dwellings let for the first time after the passing of the Bill.” But the Bill itself is declaredly only a temporary measure, expiring in some fifteen or sixteen months, vhen, almost as a matter of course, we uiuy expect newly built dwellings to be brought into the general category. This is no doubt entirely in keeping with the Government’s ultimate aim to become, in such cases, the universal landlord or mortgagee. But, in the meantime, it cannot but place an effective cheek on the private erection of houses for letting purposes. Thus it will be necessary for the Government itself to speed up its own housing schemes so as to provide homes for those needing them and work for the carpenters and bricklayers.

A point that calls for some explanation is as to why the Bill should be made to apply to dwelling-house rentals running up as high as £2lO a year. It is generally understood that the primary intention is to safeguard the earners of wages and small salaries, such as could not be expected to pay any such rental as this. It may, of course, be that

working men’s boarding-houses and the like arc in view, but in any event, here again a very decided, and a seemingly unnecessary, check will be placed upon private building operations, with all the direct aud indirect employment they provide. Coming to the provisions for the fixing of the -‘fair” rent they would on the face of them appear to be fairly reasonable, that is, of course, if we have magistrates fully competent to deal with the cases brought before them. It is, however, obviously unfair to those who have been most lenient to their tenants that they should have to start out from the basis of the probably unpayable rents they have been charging, aud with none but the distasteful recourse of haling their tenants before a magistrate iu order to get the rent justified by the improvement in the times and in the wages earned.

There is something anomalous, too, in the provision that the magistrate is “to take into consideration questions of hardship that may arise for either tenant or landlord by the granting or refusing of the application.” It is certainly a little difficult to see what bearing the relative circumstances of the parties has to do with the assessing of a “fair” rent for the premises occupied. That should surely be based solely on the value of the building and the accommodation it affords. Nor does it seem fair that, because a landlord may ne a little better to do than the tenant, he alone should be called upon to make a sacrifice to make good th: batter’s financial shortcomings. If help is needed to maintain the tenant in possession at what is othtrwise really a “fair” rent it should surely come from the community not from the sole individual. These are only a few of the thoughts that a first perusal of the summary prompts, and it will be interesting to note the points that may be raised in the debate upon what is generally admitted to be a very debatable problem.