A SPECTATOR 'S NOTEBOOK
THE News Chronicle has started an important hare, and I hope it will keep it running for some time. It appears that all over the country landlords who are owners of rent- controlled houses are tending to abscond, simply because the cost of repairs, on which the local authority can and does insist, considerably exceed the ridiculous rents they are allowed to charge under the Rent Restrictions Acts. This means that persons who were men of property, and did not consider it criminal, or even immoral, or even unsocial, to own a few houses, are, so far as they depended on the rents for a liveli- hood, being steadily ruined. It would be incredible, if it' did not happen to be true, that a pre-1939 unfurnished house, if falling within certain classes of value, cannot be let at a rent higher than it was let at on August 3rd, 1914. The cost of living generally has more than doubled since 1914; rent and rates combined have risen by no more than 10 per cent., and most of that obviously is due to increases in rates. Slight increases are permitted in respect of structural alterations carried out at the owner's expense. He cannot, of course, evict a tenant who continues to pay the specified rent. Control in the first instance—in August, 1914, when practically all build- ing stopped and demand rapidly outshot supply—was reason- able enough as a temporary expedient, but even then there was no reason why the landlord should have been singled out for penalisation. Subsidisation of rent should be as much a public charge as subsidisation of food. Hundreds of thousands of people today are living comfortably at half_ or a quarter the rent they should equitably be paying. And landlords are trying desperately, and in vain, to give away houses to anyone. * * * *
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