ALL ABOUT OUR HOUSES.

Auckland Star, Volume LXVIII, Issue 270, 13 November 1937, Page 8

ALL ABOUT OUR HOUSES.

Governments in the course of their periods of office acquire a gTeat deal of information, but it is notorious that they make little use of it. There is a popular belief that a large part of Departmental office space is occupied by pigeon-holes, all stuffed full of the reports of commissions, committees of inquiry, Departmental committees, etc., each of which se&ned when it was written to be important, though its importance thereafter mysteriously evaporated. There is also a supposition that if a Government has firmly resolved to do nothing about a matter the correct procedure is to appoint a commission to report upon it. But what should be thought about the recent Dominion-wide survey of housing? Conducted j partly at the expense, which was not inconsiderable, of the local bodies, it sought, and presumably secured, a mass of information of remarkable variety. It should be possible, some day, for an official, or even a Minister, to tell the public how many domestic baths there are in New Zealand (but not, apparently, how often they are used), or the average number of bedrooms in a five-roomed house, or the average height of the living-room in houses occupied by persons whose average income is £300. But—the question must be asked — what follows? The local bodies, in the course of their surveys, no doubt all learned of conditions of which they had been unaware, and which demand remedy, but their powers in this matter are inconsiderable. Perhaps when the Government authorities are able to present a complete statistical picture of the people's housing conditions some practical conclusions can he reached. Meanwhile, somewhere in Wellington, there is a prodigious mass of information, and the public can only hope that the results will justify the work of collecting it.