SLUM CLEARANCE.

Auckland Star, Volume LXVII, Issue 184, 5 August 1936, Page 6

SLUM CLEARANCE.

The English National Housing Committee reports that hitherto it had been generally considered that the solution of the slum problem lay between private enterprise and. the local authorities, but that the latter had abundantly demonstrated that they arc incapable of the task. Private enterprise, which is necessarily confined to economic fields, cannot, in the opinion of the Melbourne Better Housing Lea-rue, cope with the abolition of the slums. Unfortunately, so-called private enterprise has produced, and, it would seem, seeks to retain, the present slums. If slum abolition had proved sufficiently profitable, slums would have been abolished long ago. Even if a sufficient number of private individuals were prepared to carry out-the work, they would be powerless to act without the aid of statutory powers to resume and replan. Those powers should be given, Melbourne reformers think, to a central statutory board. If, then, private enterprise desires to take part in slum abolition, the-necessary co-opera-tion and assistance would be available from the board. Unfortunately, experience in England has shown that Government subsidy to private enterprise has not only failed to solve the slum problem, but has reduced the building industry itself to a state of chaos.