CO129-573-13 Prevention of Eviction Ordinance 1938 3-6-1938 - 4-8-1938 — Page 5

Lextract from Hansard of 1/6/35

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PREVENTION OF EVICTION ORDIN CE, 1938.

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THE ATTORNEY GENERAL moved the first reading of à Bill intituled "An Ordinance to prevent unreasonable eviction of tenants, and to make provision as to the rent and recovery of possession of premises in certain cases, and for purposes in connexion therewith." He said: Your Excellency,-As it is the intention to pass at this meeting a Bill intituled "Prevention of Eviction Ordinance, 1938" I wish to ask Your Excellency's consent that notice of this motion, which has been circulated to Members, stand good. It has not been possible to give the required notice within the usual time. As this measure is essential and an emergency one, and as it might be said that the reasons for its passage through all its stages are also pertinent to this application to dispense with the usual notice, I may perhaps be permitted to deal with that at the same time.

I shall also deal with the purposes of this Bill. It was forecast some time ago by the Rents Commission that some form of legislation in the matter of rents might be necessary, and though, in the majority of cases examined by that Commission, it appeared that the landlord was raising the rent merely in order to get a proper return on his money such as he was getting in 1934-that is to say in order to get back to pre-depression rates-and much of the opposition to that increase was due to the fact that tenants had been enjoying tenancies at rents far below the economic level, even at that time there were cases where the rents had been raised above the economic level.

The position has been growing more acute and housing capacity is now at saturation point. There are little more than 200 vacant floors in the whole Colony and most of them are uninhabitable. When I speak of the Colony I mean Victoria and Kowloon.

The Court has no power beyond its normal powers in relation to possession; that is to say if a man wants his own house back and if he has not given away his power of taking possession by entering into a lease, he has the right to it and the Court must enforce that right. That is a terrible weapon in a congested Colony where a tenant who is evicted has nowhere to go, and though the cases of unscrupulous use of that weapon which have come to light are few they are not entirely unknown. There was a recent case to which some publicity was given in which a landlord increased his rent, evicted his tenant and was subsequently prosecuted and tried for making a false statement of his rent to the Assessor-the latter action of course being in a Magistrate's Court.

This Bill gives power to the Court to refuse delay of an order for ejectment or possession. That power exists in England in the Rent Restriction Acts which are remaining in force there until some time this month, that is June 1938, and even after those Acts have come off, it is recognised that there will be some need for such a power in England. That power is contained in Part 2 of the Rent and Mortgage Restriction Act of 1923 which is to come into operation after the Rents Restrictions Acts have been removed. They contain a method of preventing hardship and may be described as precautionary measures after rent restriction. Here, in this case, it is proposed to use this precautionary measure as a preliminary step to rent restriction in the hope that rent restriction may really be unnecessary. In addition to delaying the power of eviction to which I have already referred, there is also a power to refer cases for a report to a Committee, a Statutory Committee, and there is also a further power of reference direct to the Committee by landlord and tenant who agree to arbitration, by which they may avoid going to Court at all. There is an appeal from that Committee's decision in the matter to the Court.

I have said that this is essentially a temporary measure, and in order that its nature shall be clearly understood and that it be retained, provision is made in Clause 6 that this Ordinance, if passed, shall remain

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