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one of the flats, and retained the other at a rent of $55 per month. In 1936 the tenants gave notice of removal. The landlords "asked us to stay on at any rent". $45 per month was offered and accepted. This year notice to quit was given by the landlords and an increase of rent offered by the tenants was refused. The tenants have now obtained accommodation in a hostel. The facts are taken from the tenants' own evidence. Here is the "pistol to the head" referred to by the Govern- ment Assessor of Rates. (See paragraph 4 of Part II of this Report.)

5. Landlords have perforce accepted unsatisfactory tenants during recent years. Tenants have been in arrears with their rent for months. Houses and flats have been constantly vacant, sometimes for years. Landlords have been called upon to pay enormous charges for excess water. Tenants by threatening to quit, have forced down rents to excessively low levels. Almost any page extracted from

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a landlord's accounts will justify the foregoing statements as regards the cheaper class of premises, and tenants in their evidence frequently admitted as much. European banker referred to "cases where landlords have cancelled several months" back rent so long as the tenant promised to stay on and pay his rent in future”. We think that notices to quit have been given in many cases because the landlord is at last in a position to ged rid of a bad tenant.

6. Unsatisfactory tenants may be dismissed without further notice, but the problem presented by the tenant who (a) is living in a class of premises which normally commands a rent he cannot afford to pay, or (b) is given notice to remove because the landlord requires the premises for his own use, is one of real difficulty.

7. As regards class (a), the answer would simply be, if there were no shortgage of accommodation, that now the landlord is in a position to demand and obtain an economic rent, the tenant must revert to the type of premises from which he came, but unhappily at the present time that type of premises has itself been taken up, and though the general restoration of pre-depression rents may gradually force successive classes of tenants one rung down the social ladder, yet the humblest class will be forced off the ladder altogether, and must either leave the Colony or sleep in the streets. The problem resolves itself into a balance of hardships. Is the landlord, who has suffered great losses, to forego his opportunity to recoup himself because his tenant is unable to pay an economic rent and cannot find alternative accom- modation; or is the tenant, who has not unnaturally seized the opportunity to move into pleasanter surroundings, and who in most cases has now made strenuous but unsuccessful endeavours to secure cheaper premises, to be forced either to meet charges which in his circumstances are ruinous, or to be rendered homeless? The question can only be answered by having regard to the effect of any legislative inter- vention on the general prosperity of the whole community.

8. In the first place it should be remembered that it is only human to protest against increased charges, and we are not satisfied that in all cases tenants could not, perhaps by effecting other savings, afford with more or less difficulty to pay economic rents to their landlords. In one case a Chinese clerk with a wife and two children earning $75 per month employed two servants at wages of $7 and $5 per month. respectively. His rent is to be increased by $6 per month. By dispensing with a servant he could in the one case more than, or in the other almost, meet the increased rent. The same tenant had not looked for other accommodation because he "relied on the Rents Commission", and this attitude was not uncommon. Another had failed to inquire for other premises because her notice had not yet expired and there was, therefore, "no need to worry". A European tenant of a flat sent us a written com- plaint. In May, 1935, during the depression, he obtained the flat at a rent of $120 per month including refrigeration. On his providing his own refrigerator, the rent was reduced to $112.50 per month. In January, 1938, the landlords (a limited company) informed all the tenants of this block of flats who had not entered into leases, that as from 1st March, 1938, the rent would be $170 per month, or to those who signed a lease for at least one year, $150 per month. The tenant wrote to the landlords stating that he would probably be relieved at the end of April, and it was