PROTEST ENTERED

Timaru Herald, Volume CXLIII, Issue 20898, 30 November 1937, Page 11

PROTEST ENTERED

NON-EVICTION OF TENANTS The South Canterbury branch of the New Zealand Real Estate Institute decided yesterday to join in with the Institute’s Dominion-wide protest to the Government against the clause in the Finance Bill providing for the non-eviction of tenants without previous provision of alternative accommodation. The chairman of the local branch (Mr J. H. Sinclair-Thomson) said that the executive had decided to send a telegram and a letter to the Rev. Clyde Carr, the member for Timaru, asking that the enactment of the legislation in question should at least be delayed until a fuller discussion of its implications had been made, as it appeared that restrictive legislation like that was going to have the effect of harfning those people whom it was presumably designed to assist. Such legislation was likely to defeat its own purpose if imposed while the housing shortage existed, and would be of little use until after the shortage had been overcome. Members were of the opinion that the measure would deter not only agents but builders and lessors from legitimate business.

“This eiame might, like the boomerang. recoil on the very persons it is designed to help,” remarked the presi-

dent of the Southland branch of the Heal Estate Institute of New Zealand (Mr J. T. Carswell) recently, commenting on the clause in the Finance Bill, Introduced In the House of Representatives, which requires landlords who wish to gain possession of their houses to provide suitable alternative accommodation for their tenants. "If this clause becomes law It undoubtedly will mean that where a man owns a house which he desires to sell he will, once It becomes vacant, not allow another tenant into it, but will hold it unoccupied until it is sold. He knows that, once he lets it, his chances of selling will be Infinitesimal, because he will be unable to guarantee possession to * prospective buyer."