In such emergency it is plain that the Legislature in the exercise of its police power can legislate to relieve it.

Later cases expanded the concept of "affected with a public interest" to include matters temporarily so affected.

Its judgment on that score is entitled to the respect granted like legislation enacted pursuant to the police power.

It is by such practical considerations based on experience rather than by theoretical inconsistencies that the question of equal protection is to be answered.

In other words, "contracts are made subject to this exercise of the [protective] power of the State when otherwise justified

—our decisions relating to the enforcement of provisions of leases during a period of scarcity of housing.

Whatever doubt there may have been that the protective power of the state, its police power, may be exercised—without violating the true intent of the provision of the Federal Constitution—in directly preventing the immediate and literal enforcement of contractual obligations by a temporary and conditional restraint, where vital public interests would otherwise suffer, was …

—noting New York's emergency law allowed landlords to recover possession in situations where tenants were "holding over and [were] objectionable," landlords wanted to occupy the dwelling themselves or demolish the premises and rebuild, among other provisions

—this Court sustained the legislative power to fix rents as between landlord and tenant upon the ground that the operation of the statutes was temporary to tide over an emergency and that the circumstances were such as to clothe "the letting of buildings... with a public interest so great as to justify regulation by law."

The United States Supreme Court consistently has upheld rent control statutes as proper exercises of the police power in times of public emergency.

[CITATION] West End Avenue, Inc. v. Stern