1
:
-8-
446
tenants of purely domestic tenements should be required to give
three months notice. This seems to be outside the scope of the
Ordinance, which is to protect tenants and not landlords, and there
seems to be no reason why to give landlords a longer notice than
they themselves had stipulated for, especially as new tenants can
always be found during the existing shortage and the Ordinance
cease to exist when the shortage comes to an end.
15.
Another proposal was that tenants should not be allowed to
assign or sub-let without the permission of the landlord. Here
111
again there seems to be no reason for altering by statute the terms
of the tenancy agreed upon between the parties, and the landlords
who asked for this provision could not point to any danger which it
would avoid. Probably the landlorda are afraid that some tenants
may transfer their tenancies in consideration of a premium, or may
transfer them to persons who will be prepared not to insist on the
standard rent, and the landlords would naturally like to have this
opportunity in their own hands. The possibility undoubtedly
exists, but there seems to be no reason why the legislature should
assist one party rather than the other to acquire a gain which is
contrary to the spirit of the Ordinance.
16.
It was also suggested that farmers of house property should
be allowed to collect from their tenants only a certain percentage
over the rent payable by the farmers to their immediate lessors,
The answer to this is that such a provision would be ineffectual
without a standard rent and is unnecessary with a standard rent.
In any case it would have been impossible to lay down a uniform per-
centage. Farmers whose receipts are affected by the Ordinance
are given by section 5 a right to apply to the court for a revision
of the rent payable by them to their immediate lessors.
Page 450Page 451