MUNICIPAL FAMILY

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXXII, Issue 22166, 20 July 1935, Page 2 (Supplement)

MUNICIPAL FAMILY

ENGLISH HOUSING SCHEME COMPETENT WOMAN IN CHARGE DOMESTIC "TIFFS" ADJUSTED Residents in the corporation housing estates at Lancaster are claimed to bo the happiest municipal family in England. Only six months have elapsed since they came under the jurisdiction of a housing manageress, Miss A. V. Baynes, and her two female assistants, but the new order of things has been an all round success already. This, at any rate, was the opinion expressed to an interviewer by a number of the tenants themselves. It was a happy inspiration, they declared, when Lancaster Corporation decided to put its own houses under the guiding influence of a woman. Miss Baynes and her assistants are not merely rent collectors. They are home-builders in the deepest sense of the word. By experience and. examination they have qualified for the work, which takes in everything connected with houses —even to the law as it affects landlord and tenant. At present there are 1100 tenants on the estates, but this number will soon be increased. Every form of complaint that a housewife can have —and what housewife hasn't a complaint at some time or other? —is passed on to Miss Baynes. She is the " Mother Superior," as it' were, and she is sometimes asked to repair flaws in the human structure as well. These include children's ailments and domestic " tiffs," and remedies are supplied, or suggested, just as speedily as for ordinary household defects. Miss Baynes, who held a similar appointment

at Chesterfield before going to Lancaster, stated that she finds her duties immensely interesting.

" Our great object," she said, " is to maintain a real home-like atmosphere in every house controlled by the corporation. That can only be accomplished by making the houses comfortable in the way of regular repair and cleanliness. " When we collect the rents every tenant is asked if there is anything that needs attending to in the house, and whether it be only a faulty washer or something more serious, my assistants are competent to examine it on the spot. Tradesmen are not called in until the work has actually to be done. " When a tenant leaves a house we get it thoroughly cleaned and painted for the next one, thus assuring that the atmosphere will be pleasant from the start. I find that the women householders prefer dealing with women in matters connected «hvith the home, simply because they have more in common with each other. " Every member of the town council and every official has been extremely courteous and helpful to the new housing department, and it will not be their fault or ours if the tenants in Lancaster do not become envied as the happiest municipal family in the whole of England."