These men hold the properties through various corporations that they organize for the purpose. Their equities are usually trifling but the rents from these small investments on properties that are loaded with first, second, third and sometimes fourth mortgages up to within 10 per cent of their total value, are enormous. It is not unusual to find them securing a yearly return in excess of their total investment in the property.

This is the type of landlords who flood the courts with these rent cases. The clerk of the Seventh District Court, which has the largest number of these cases, testified that there are ten landlords in that district who furnish over 75 per cent of the many thousands of cases pending in that court. When these landlords have driven the rents to the limit permitted by the courts they sell or lease the property for a long term of years upon a valuation partially arrived at on the basis of these exorbitant rents.

Tenants are at a great disadvantage in disproving the valuations placed upon these properties based on the expert testimony which the landlord is always able to produce in support of his valuation. The experts are necessarily owners, agents or brokers of real estate, most of whom are ranged on the side of the landlords. The procuring of impartial testimony of this character by the tenant is practically impossible even if he could afford to pay for it, which he seldom can.

This method of fixing values is in itself fundamentally wrong and invites fraud. Rents paid during an emergency arising out of a housing famine are not a proper test of value nor are purchases and sales made under these abnormal conditions.

The best and safest test of value is the assessed value. The statute requires that property be assessed at its full value. If the valuation is excessive the owner has the right of review.

Many do not buy these properties to hold or for investment. They buy them to "readjust" the rents and sell them on that basis.

Your Committee recommends that the law be amended so as to provide that the assessed value shall be presumed to be the value of the investment. The Legislature could not lawfully go further. Such a provision would put the burden upon the landlord of disproving the correctness of the assessed value which would be a protection to the tenant.

Summary Proceedings Instituted in the City of New York in 1920 and 1921 and the Various Districts in Which They Were

(5) Necessity for Continuing the Rent Laws.

There has been a partial discussion on this subject in another part of the report.

Attention is called:

1. To the testimony of Mr. Frank Mann, Commissioner of the Tenement House Department of the City of New York, and to the statistics submitted by him. Commissioner Mann testified on January 5, 1922, among other things, as follows:

"The problem of housing New York's 6,000,000 inhabitants is still far from solution. A large number of one and two-family houses have, of course, been erected during the year 1921 but aside from the cost of these which makes them prohibitive for the ordinary workingman, their capacity for supplying the deficiency in housing is after all very limited. It is to the construction of tenement houses that we must look for relief from the present overcrowded conditions, and the number of tenements erected during the year is still below the normal need, to say nothing of making up for five years of comparative cessation in such construction. Before the war the new tenements provided additional housing for approximately 25,000 families each year but the tenements erected in 1921 will provide homes for only about 6,000 families. The figures for the past five years show at

a glance how serious the situation has been and how great is the need for more housing. The figures are as follows:

"The total number of apartments, therefore, provided in new tenements erected during the past five years is only 29,120, or approximately 17% more than the normal annual production before 1914."

Differently stated, there have been provided in the past five years 29,120 apartments as against 125,000 apartments that were provided during the five years preceding the war, so that even if there had been no cessation of building the present rate of construction, taking the year 1920 or 1921, is equal to a trifle over one-fifth of the normal construction.

Commissioner Mann proceeds as follows:

"Some encouragement, however, is to be obtained from the fact that a very considerable amount of tenement construction is now under way. Statistics compiled by the Tenement House Department show that on December 15, 787 new tenements were in process of erection and that these when completed will house 16,078 families. As almost all of this construction has been begun since April, 1921, the logical inference must be drawn that the tax exemption law has given considerable stimulus to housing. An analysis of the situation, however, shows that the character of the new housing which has resulted from this law does not fully meet the real emergency, namely, the need for houses for the wage earner, i. e., houses where moderate rents for decent living

conditions are available.

"The statistics of the Bureaus of Buildings and the Tenement House Department show that during the year there have been approximately 25,000 apartments provided; that

is, in one and two family houses and tenement houses, totaling in the aggregate that number of apartments. In the case of the one-family house, eleven or twelve rooms, i. e., five or six rooms for each family. In the tenement houses, the average has scarcely been three rooms to an apartment. The rental cost of these houses averages $20 per room or even more. This does not include the houses that are considered of a sumptuous character, located particularly in Manhattan, where the rental of the rooms runs from $100 to $200 per month per room.

"The average wage earner with a family of four persons, -the average number per family cannot live decently in less than four or five rooms and bath. At the average rental this means, therefore, $80 to $100 per month. It must be obvious that this is an impossible rent for the average wage earner to pay. The pressing need is for apartments which can be rented at from $8 to $10 a month per room."

As

2. The following statistics from the Bureau of Buildings for the boroughs of Manhattan and the Bronx are interesting and instructive. They demonstrate that notwithstanding the great shortage in housing due to the exigencies of the war, construction is still far below that of normal years preceding the war. against an average of new apartments furnished for each of the seven years from 1910-1916 (both inclusive) of 6,663 apartments, we have an average for the five years 1917-1921 (both inclusive) of but 1,740 apartments and although the construction costs have almost doubled, the estimated annual costs of the buildings constructed in these five years are far below the average for the seven years preceding the war.