MORTGAGE RELIEF

Poverty Bay Herald, Volume LX, Issue 18191, 12 September 1933, Page 6

MORTGAGE RELIEF

AMENDMENTS EXPECTED HELP FOR TENANTS Assistance granted under the mortgagors’ and tenants’ relief legislation, the purpose of which is to grant relict not only to farmers but to city dwellers who have mortgages made burdensome by economic conditions, was referred to by the acting-Prime Minister, Rt. lion, J. G. Coates, in an address at Opawa, Christchurch, Air. Coates said further amendments to the legislation were contemplated, so that mortgagors and tenants might get the full measure of relief intended by the Legislature. The Government’s policy, he explain-’ ed, had been aimed at avoiding harsh treatment of mortgagors. Every possible recourse to law and the principles oi common humanity and equity had ensured that relief be given in place ol summary foreclosure and eviction. In contrast- with this, in New York city alone, in the first 10 months of 1932, there were over a quarter of a million orders of the court for summary eviction. Also in the Middle-Western States of America, machine-guns and tear gas bombs had been used to evict a farm family from their home. It must be remembered, said Mr. Coates, that the New Zealand court*: had an unfettered discretion in respect of those mortgages and leases which came within the scope of the Acts, principally by way of the remission ot all arrears of interest or rent, the reduction of future interest and rent, the postponement of payments of the principal of mortgages and the prevention of the mortgagee selling up the mortgagor or landlords exercising powers of distraint for rent. This relief had been and was still being given to hundreds of deserving citizens who, as a result of unemployment and the fall in prices, would otherwise have had to give up their homes and farms.