Rooms to Let'
By EDWARD HODGKIN
IN time of war hard cases make law; something has to be done in a hurry, and the fact that it is done at all is as important as the way in which it is done. As the years go by this emergency legislation becomes a habit; vested interests grow up, and there is never the same urgency to repeal as there is to enact.- It is for this reason we are still saddled with such war-time expedients as food-subsidies and identification-cards. And it is for this reason, too, that the 1946 Furnished Houses (Rent Control) Act continues in force, long after the situation with which it was created to deal has vanished.
The people affected by the Act are all those concerned with the letting of " rooms " or lodgings : Boarding-houses and hotels are not intended to be within its scope. But that leaves a large and on the whole not very , prosperous section of the community (probably in London alone amounting to at least a quarter of a million), for whom what used to be genteelly called "furnished apartments" are, by accident or design, home. And, on the other side, it affects a fairly large number of men and women whose livelihood depends on being able to function as landlords and landladies.
When the war came landlords and landladies in the big towns heard bankruptcy knocking at their doors. First of all evacua- tion, and then the bombs and the disappearance of many of the people they usually catered for—students and foreigners, for example—meant that they were fortunate if their houses were requisitioned. Without some lucky stroke of this sort it was only the heavily-capitalised or the exceptionally dogged who managed to keep their heads above water. But for those who did succeed in lasting out the war the lean years were followed by one or two fat years. Rooms in big towns became precious as gold or bottles of whisky, and rents not unnaturally went up.
Also not unnaturally a number of people who were new to the business (and a surprising number who were new to the country as well) saw an opportunity of making quick, easy money.
They bought the leases of large, and often dilapidated, houses, furnished them with any junk that was available, and charged extortionate rents. It was to cope with this sort of injustice that the 1946 Act was passed.
Its main object was to provide a quick remedy for tenants who were being charged unreasonable rents. The Minister of Health (at that time Mr. Bevan) was given authority to set up a number of Rent Tribunals with power to fix rents. These Tribunals are still in existence and still function. But there are a number of curious features about the way in which they work. In the first place their members, and even their chairmen, are not necessarily required to possess either any knowledge of law or of the business of being a landlord. This might be explained as simply another fine example of the Englishman's capacity for voluntary unskilled service if it were not for the fact that the members of the tribunals are paid. What is more, they are paid according to the number of cases that come before them; if no appeals are made to them they get no pay. And the second oddity is that the Tribunals are their own judge of their competence to deal with a case. This, again, might be under- .standable if it was possible to appeal from their judgements. But there is no appeal from a Rent Tribunal to a higher court.
It is perhaps not surprising in these circumstances that the Rent Tribunals have produced a great many erratic judgements. Of course there are highly conscientious members on the Tribunals, and there are Tribunals which have a deserved reputation as a whole for impartiality. But there are others which are not so good. Tribunals may fail to deliver justice for one of two reasons: they may start off with a prejudice against landlords, treating the fact of their existence with the same distaste as a commissar shows for a kulak; or they may fail simply through having no adequate standard by which to assess a fair rent. It might have been thought that, after the Ministry of Health had dotted the country with a series of all-powerful but inexpert legal bodes, it would have taken the trouble to ensure that they received precise guidance on the rules that should govern their conduct. One such instruction was apparently sent to Tribunals shortly after the Act came into force, but its contents have, for some inexplicable reason, always been kept secret.
The one piece of formal evidence that exists of the way in which the Tribunals are supposed to assess the fair rent for any particular room is the questionnaire which is supposed to be filled up by the landlord in each case when an appeal is made against his rents. Although this questionnaire is in some respects very detailed, it leaves cut a great many of the facts which are essential for a proper assessment. There is, for example, no reference to the total Capital which has been sunk in the house. A great number of the houses, in London at any rate, which have been converted into furnished rooms for letting, are held by the tenant on a full repairing lease. The capital commitment of the lessee should equitably incaide not only the original sum paid for the lease, but also the insurance premiums which are (or should be) paid to provide against the time when the lease falls in, and against the expenditure which will then have to be made on dilapidations. There is also no allOwance made for the salary which should be due to the land- lord and his wife, who usually workall day seven days a week. Some Tribunals have seen nothing odd in asse.ssing rents which leave a marr:ed couple with an annual profit of about £100. Some Tribunals, for the matter of that, see nothing odd in assessing rents which leave the landlord with an annual deficit. As Tribunals are not obliged to ask for accounts from the landlord, or to look at them if they are. offered, or to accept them if they are looked at, the decision of the Tribunal may bear no relation to the facts of the case.
In theory it is possible for the landlord, as well as the tenant, to lodge an appeal with a Tribuna'. This sometimes happens, and permission has on rare occasions been given for rents to be raised. But, until a recent H:gh Court decision, it was virtually impossible for a landlord to get rid of a tenant who was unruly cr a nuisance or who refused to pay the rent. In fact, when the inevitable landlord-tenant d:sputes come before a Tribunal, it is still not unusual for a tenant from one of these categories to be given security of tenure for three months or longer.
Land'ords connot, it is true, be acquitted of all blame .for their misfortunes. They can today almost always be acquitted of charging exorbitant rents, for the excellent reason that cam- petition would quickly force them out of business if they did so. But many of them are poor accountants and poorer lawyers. They lack the necessary skill to present their accounts in a businesslike manner and to argue a case which is often a good one. They feel, with a certain amount of justification, that the Tribunals are against them, and, at least until the -recent change of Government, they felt, with even more justification, that " the authorities" were against them too. There may now be a chance of securing justice, although justice for even the most conscientious and impoverished landlords is so susceptible of misinterpretation that a Conservative Government May fight shy of undertaking to provide it. But at least the new Minister has agreed to review the Act. And, unless it is accepted that letting furnished rooms to people who want them is a criminal offence, there would seem to be no case for allowing the 1946 Act to continue in force unmodified.
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