RENT RESTRICTION ACT.

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXVII, Issue 20629, 30 July 1930, Page 14

RENT RESTRICTION ACT.

Sir, —Your correspondent "Amusement Tax" is disposed to treat the annual renewal of this Act in a humorous vein. I am tint.. If, as he says, the Act is a dead letter, why not let it lapse ? Until some of its most iniquitous provisions were modified it stopped all building of houses for the purpose of letting and left the business of building houses to the Government Tlio Government proceeded to advance the money for such purpose ii|> to 95 per cent. and. I believe, at one time, to 97a per cent., of the value of land and house, with tho inevitable efleet thatin a few years a large number of the houses are again on their hands, with tho impossibility of selling them again for anything like the balance of the money owing'on them. Vet this Government continues to find the money on these lines and actually boasts of having lent, far more last year than the Reform Government did in previous years! This simply means that the proportionate loss will be so much greater But, as the overburdened taxpayer will htivo to foot tho bill (he political vote-buyer does not worry. The results of tho original Act were so disastrous that in 1920 it was enacted that the Act should not apply to any houses built alter November, 1920, and wo now have two classes, one of which is exempt from and tho other suffers under tho provisions of this iniquitous measure! In tho name of fairplay, why? When this was renewed in 1925 the Minuter of Labour, the Hon. Mr. Anderson, who moved its ic-cnadion for one year, himself said: "I hope this law will disappear from flic Statute Book in another year Ii is not a pood law. It is not a good law in any way, in so fur as it concerns the people who arc nominally benefited by it." Further, he said, "I believo that the sooner tho rent restriction is removed from, the Statute Book the better it will be." Yet every year since then, as "Amusement Tax" say?, "the Labour Party dramatically cracks the big whip and the Government obediently kennels np," with a cynical and complete indifference to the interests of those landlords affected by the law, and a flagrant denial of the fair and honourable treatment to which they are entitled. J. Thornfs. 231, Parnell Road.