HOUSES FOR THE PEOPLE.

Auckland Star, Volume LVI, Issue 184, 6 August 1925, Page 10

HOUSES FOR THE PEOPLE.

(To the Editor.)

Sir, —Your article on the Minister's cry for private people to come forward || and build houses for the workers is int answerable. This very much reformed Government have passed so many 801--eheviklaws against, house owners at tha . dictation of the I.W.W. that no person outside of the lunatic asylum wouli think of investing 1/ in such t M worthless investment. The present Gov erhirient have advanced so much and have built such an expensive clasj of -house vthat; it .will? prove as disastrous an : undertaking as tbe soldiers' settle•me.nt scheme. - As you. rightly point out, the cost of labour and material is such that it would be impossible to get any , return on .houses built under present conditions, or to compete with those built by private capital before the war. What makes it worse, and houses so scarce, is that owners have been so harassed with vexatious and extreme' - .Bolshevik laws that they have found it .pays better to sell and invest their money than to have their houses made piggeries by the slum-maker.. The cost of repairs are such to-day that I haVe ■' found that at the, end of the year that there was- a loss instead of a profit. There has been quite a crusade • on by some of the parsons against landlords. One reverend gentleman had only just arrived here when he joined in the hue and cry, and stated that no Christian man could be the owner of slum property, so that, according to Ms theology, if one of his deacons built a house and he had the misfortune to let it .to Mr. and Mrs. Bolshy, who would succeed in making his house a slum ia - a few weeks, this deacon, because of |jj this act, over which a paternal Government gave him no control, was everlastingly disgraced. The Government have created the situation, and the people they have robbed and plundered, by their dishonest laws will hardly come' forward and assist to extricate them from the net they have woven around/ themselves.—l am, etc.,

A VICTIM OF REFORM LAWS.