STATE HOUSE RENTALS

Bay of Plenty Beacon, Volume 14, Issue 47, 5 October 1949, Page 4

STATE HOUSE RENTALS

Sir, —Your correspondent “Mac” seems to take a queer view of house rents. In suggesting that a man of higher income be charged a higher rent he apparently wants to start something. Why stop at house rents? A man on £2OOO a year should be charged 2/- for a beer; if he travels on a bus, charged four times the usual fare and he should pay at least 10/- for a seat in the pictures. It is such an awful crime for a man to have been successful that everything possible should be done to discourage him. Conversely, .if a man is lazy and wastes his opportunities, his rent should be reduced. If he doesn’t work at all, then he should get his beer for nothing and live rent free. This should apply both, to State and privately owned houses. A landlord may appear to lose a bit of rent from a shiftless tenant, but he would get extra from a diligent and successful one, so he should come out right in the end. It is true that quite a lot of higher income men Gccupy State houses. This is because either they have increased their incomes since > they went into State houses or else they were allotted the State houses when they were going begging. Strange as it may seem now, in the early days of State houses there were lots of them empty because the rents charged were higher than the ruling rates then charged for rented houses. Yours etc., “MacNUTS”