ONE-ROOM FLATS.

Auckland Star, Volume LX, Issue 221, 18 September 1929, Page 10

ONE-ROOM FLATS.

NOT WANTED IN AUCKLAND. CITY COUNCIL COMMENDED. TOWN PLANNERS APPROVE. A letter of commendation is to be forwarded to the City Council by the Auckland Town Planning Association in connection with its lefusal to countenance the erection of buildings in Auckland to contain one-room flats.

To a representative meeting of the association last evening, Mr. E. V. Blake presiding, i\liss Alice Bastcn presented an exhaustive report on behalf of the newly-constituted housing group. After reviewing the circumstances leading up to the council's-action, on the advice of its town planning committee, the report expressed the view that "bachelor Hats" were most undesirable from economic, social and hygienic points of view.

Remarking that the opinions expressed by the group were supported by a number of social workers in the city, Miss Bastcn said the group felt that the scheme made no provision for supervision from the moral point of view. In any case buildings such as proposed should be designed for the accommodation, of one sex only. "Provision of one-room flats for married couples who should be housed in their own homes," the report stated, "is not designed to increase (he birth rate."

The group expressed the opinion thai lower-paid workers would be better cared for in hostels and private houses, which not only gave good value for money received, but allayed the anxiety of country parents who felt that tJit young folk were safe amid the city's temptations. The group felt that if one-room flats existed in Auckland many of these young workers would be tempted to share the cost of flats in order to be free from the very wise restrictions which were otherwise imposed upon them for their own good. The meeting unanimously endorsed tinaction of Council in refusing to sanction the erection of such flats.