HOUSING.

Auckland Star, Volume LVI, Issue 187, 10 August 1925, Page 14

HOUSING.

(To the Editor.) Sir, —Some time ago I made the acquaintance of a young Knglishman who told nic that his family, who arc farmers, lived for ISO years "in a house built of clay reinforced with shingle. The house is a two-storeyed one of 10 rooms, large and lofty. The walls are two feet thick; it is thatched with straw, also two feet ..thick; it has an efficient number of fireplaces, even the bedrooms are supplied in that respect. The house is cool in summer and warm in winter. In appearance it does not differ from any other except that it is thatched and white-washed outside, and. my informant concluded, a delightful house to live in. The inhabitants of Latin America, a similar climate to ours, mostly live in these adobe houses, as they are termed. This mode of building was discussed in the local Press five years ago, but nothing came of it. The question of housing the people becomes more acute from year tq year, and will continue so with its attending evils unless we find a cheaper way of building houses than £'200 per room. Xo matter how many houses we build it is impossible for a working man to pay 40/ to 50/, nearly half his wages, if in constant employment, which he must pay or live in a one-roomed slum at the rackrent of 12/ to 15/ unfurnished, or 20/ furnished. Thus our young married people are forced into slums; they rear no families, live on scratch meals and probably will end their days in slums. An adobe house could be built for less than half the price of the rickety narrow structures going up in wood, or the ugly shacks in concrete. What the writer of this letter, a man in the SO's. wishes to know is whether there is, in all Xew Zealand, a man of means who will give this scheme a trial, and give working people the choice of a well-built adobe house containing four 14ft by 14ft rooms. The only salvation of Xew Zealand is decent housing nnd most of the evils of slumdom will disappear.— I am. etc., OLD SETTLER.'