STATE HOUSES

Ashburton Guardian, Volume 60, Issue 31, 16 November 1939, Page 3

STATE HOUSES

APPLICATIONS TOTAL 20,000. YEARS OF WORK IN THE NORTH. (Per Press Association). WELLINGTON, November 15. The transfer of men, mostly carpenters, from State housing work to jobs in military camps had given the Housing Department a serious set-back, and consequent difficulty had boon experienced in keeping bricklayers and plasterers going, said the Minister for Housing (the Hon. H. T. Armstrong) in an interview. Npw that the men were resuming work with the department, the position of labour would be eased considerably, and the programme for the Dominion would he pushed on as fast as possible. “There has been a falling-off in the number of applications for loans by people wishing to build their own homes; hut it has not boon nearly as marked as we expected it to he,” said Mr Armstrong. “Applications for rental houses, however, are just as numerous as ever. There are more than ,6000 applications pending in Wellington alone, and moie than 7000 in Auckland. For the Dominion as a whole applications number about 20,000. “We are definitely catching up with the leeway in the South Island, where the housing shortage is not as serious as it is in parts of the North Island,” Mr Armstrong added; “but I can see no prospect of making very much impression on the shortage in Wellington and Auckland for many years to come. If the war has the effect of causing private enterprise to build less, we will simply have to build more. The work must go on.”