HOUSE-BUILDING

Dominion, Volume 12, Issue 64, 10 December 1918, Page 3

HOUSE-BUILDING

, ► PROPOSED RESTRICTIVE LEGISLATION. An owner of several properties,, discussing the proposed tenancy provision (Clause 11) in tho War Legislation Bill, states that if tho Government persist in passing a measure wliich will prevent an owner gaining possession of his own property in a reasonable way, this, combined with the rent-hampering clause, will perpetuate exactly that which the Government and Council desire to remove. Who, for example, he asks, is going to pull down old houses and build new ones, or who will- go in for residential building at all—just the thing that is wanted in Wellington to improvo the city and relieve congestion—if he is to be hampered in his dealing with tenants and rents by restrictive legislation? Already, says our informant, everyone in trade or commerce 'has been permitted to increase the price of his labour, material, and goods, whilst war legislation has prevented house-owners raising rents (though rates have increased and the price of all painting work and pluiobing and carpenter's repairs has increased by from 100 to 200 per cent.). Now the Legislature seeks to prevent au owner gaining possession of | his own house, oven though lie may wish, to occupy it himself. If this was not gross interference with "the sacred rights of property," which legislators and thearinv authorities of Europe prate of, he would'like to know what was. By passing such a clause Pnrliainont would at once, and very effectually, put a svop to a great deal of building enterprise! for few business mou would think of investing their money in such u very deslrablo way, if they woro not to 1» allowed freedom of action in dealing with the properties thereafter to the best advantage. Wellington, of nil places in New Zealand, wants more houses and better houses, but the clnuse suggested, is going to prevent what is most desirable. Were it not that owners have not during tho last three years been allowed to raiserents, a good many of the old houses complnincd of would probably have been swept away to make way for belter ones, but such enterprise will lie choked by the Clause 11 (sb), if it is passed on to the Statute Book. <