PUBLIC PETITION

Waikato Times, Volume 124, Issue 20736, 21 February 1939, Page 8

PUBLIC PETITION

RECEPTION AT HAMILTON PLEA AGAINST RENTS ACT Excellent support for the Dominionwide petition which will ask Parliament that property owners shall be permitted to manage their properties free of any legislative restriction was reported to-day by the organiser, Mr E. Bull. “The petition is being received particularly well by Hamilton property owners, and already nearly every interested owner has given his signature; in fact, no one approached has yet declined to sign it,’’ said -Mr Bull. We have been inundated with letters from all parts of the Dominion asking when the petition will be circulated in the WTiters' districts.” The petition has been prepared to counter another petition in which some tenant-occupiers of various forms of business premises are urging that all forms of business premises in the Dominion should be placed within the scope of the Fair Rents Act, 1936. The property-owners’ petition is in two forms, one signed by owners of freehold and leasehold estates in premises used for business purposes and urging that these premises should not be brought within the scope of the Act or any similar legislation. The second form of the petition, signed by persons interested as owners, lessors or shareholders in real property, or as ratepayers, urges that the Government should not extend the expiry date of the Act, which, it is stated, has fulfilled I its purpose. Act Fundamentally Wrong I The chief complaint of the petitionI ers, Mr Bull added, was not so much ; that the Act was unjust as that it was considered to be fundamentally wrong. ! Instancing a type of situation which it brought down in its present application to dwelling houses, he said that he had been informed by a number of legal firms, both in Hamilton and Auck- : land, that these firms had in their possession transfers already on the point of completion, but as a result of terms of the Fair Rents Act, repossession of the dwellings concerned could not be obtained. Also, many land agents m Hamilton attributed the paucity of dwelling sales to their inability to find suitable premises for the out-going tenant. One woil-known land agent

had mentioned that if 100 houses were vacant to-day. no trouble would be experienced in letting them before the end of the week, and that the prospects for the sales of dwelling property appeared to be extremely good, but that the repossession clause in the Act retarded disposals-