The legislation before us was enacted to accomplish the twofold purpose of eliminating intolerable and dangerous housing conditions in multiple dwellings, for the most part in slum areas, and of increasing the supply of safe and adequate housing accommodations. As already noted, in passing the amendatory act, the Legislature expressly found (1) that there existed, in the cities to which its provisions apply, deteriorated or deteriorating dwellings which contain conditions constituting a threat to life, health and safety and (2) that there was a shortage, constituting a public emergency, of habitable dwelling units (L. 1962, ch. 492, § 1).
Confronted with such conditions — and we know from the cases which have been before us over the years that these findings are not without basis — the Legislature was warranted in attempting, by an exercise of its police power, to take remedial steps to promote the public interest in the maintenance of an adequate supply of safe and sanitary housing accommodations. (See People ex rel. Durham Realty Corp. v. La Fetra, 230 N. Y. 429, 442, 445; Adamec v. Post, 273 N. Y. 250; Loab Estates v. Druhe, 300 N. Y. 176; cf. Matter of Emray Realty Corp. v. McGoldrick, 307 N. Y. 772; see, also, People ex rel. Clark v. Gilchrist, 243 N. Y. 173, 185.) In the Loab Estates case, this court upheld, as a valid exercise of the police power, a local law which, because of a housing shortage, denied to an owner of a multiple dwelling ‘‘ the [unlimited] power to withdraw his property from the rental market” (300 N. Y. 176, 180, supra), and legislation has long been sustained in this State and elsewhere, likewise as an exercise of the police power, which either (1) required that such an owner make alterations necessary for the health and safety of his tenants o