HOUSING CONDITIONS.

Auckland Star, Volume LII, Issue 190, 11 August 1921, Page 4

HOUSING CONDITIONS.

The conditions of overcrowding in Christchurch, revealed this week, which are matched in Wellington, and no doulbt have their counterparts in Auckland, re-direct attention to the housing problem. When one reads of seventeen and even twenty-two people in a fourroomed house, one asks whether it is really impossible to do anything to relieve such congestion. The difliculties in the. way are admittedly very formidable. There is no money for State and municipal housing schemes, and ' private enterprise, hedged in in one direction by the law of landlord and tenant, and attracted in the other by other forms of investment, will not build houses to let. But when full ' allowance is made for these difficulties, can local bodies or philanthropic organisations not think of some methods of relieving this distress? For example, tents on public land or private | land rented for the purpose. The Christchureh "Sun," "we notiqc, suggests a canvas town on sand dunes at New Brighton, which it considers could be established, ■with the ordinary conveniences of town life, the price of a couple of municipal .bungalows. With the "Sun," we should say that many families would be glad to exchange their overcrowded houses for life in tents. It may also .be asked if full use is ibelng made of vacant 'buildings which might be adapted for accommodating families. Here in Auckland, for example, there is "Kiibryde," which we are told to-day is "falling ranidly into Is it so far gone as to 'be absolutely uninhabitable ? If not, it would have been wiser for the City Council to let it out to- a number of families than to allow it to lie empty, a prey to the weather and thieves. It seems to us that a little enterprise on the part of local Ibodies, in conjunction with social welfare organisations, might do something to mitigate some of the worst housing conditions. As to the larger aspects of the question, improvement is dependent mainly on economic factors—the amount of money available for State and municipal schemes, the price of building, and the willingness of private enterprise to invest money in rented houses. It is to private enterprise that the people must always look—short of State Socialism — j for most of their houses, and the trouble i is that the law, conjoined with economic i causes, sternly discourages men from ' becoming landlords. In its solicitude for the tenant—a very proper solicitude within reason—the Legislature has weighted the law heavily against the landlord, and thereby discouraged him from fulfilling his function. It is too much to expect of human nature, that a man with money to invest should put it into houses for letting, when be can get an equal return involving much less worry from a loan. The fair rent principle may be quite a good one, but its '■ operation under the present law is not | sufficiently liberal to be fair to the land- | lord as well as protective to the tenant. The restrictions on the right of ejection, framed in the interests of the tenant, i recoil on his class by reducing the I amount of accommodation. Hundreds of houses lie empty because the owners j wish to sell and will not, or dare not, take the risk of admitting a tenant of whom they may not be able to get rid if necessary in their own interests. The modification of the law on this point might inflict hardship on some tenants, but we believe that ultimately tenants, as a class, would benefit. Parliament soon will have to consider the amendment or abolition of these restrictions on landlordism. The landlord is a necessary factor in the social system, so one way to get more houses is to encourage him, instead of discouraging him at every turn.