TENTS AND SHACKS

Auckland Star, Volume LXXIV, Issue 42, 19 February 1943, Page 2

TENTS AND SHACKS

WORKERS' ABODES

AUSTRALIA'S HOUSING NEEDS (0.C.) SYDNEY,/Feb. 16. Many families whose men are working up to 56 hours a week for the war effort are living under squalid conditions. This is due not only to the fact that Australia needs tens of thousands of new houses because of past neglect, but also.to the necessity of rushing up munition factories without waiting to build houses for the employees, and to movements of population to enlarged factories in various centres. In places families are living in tents, caravans and shanties made of any bits and pieces they could find. At one centre a woman with her husband and two children has as her home a tent, with a camp fire outside, and an open-air shower for which water has to be carried from a house several hundred yards away. Even in the suburbs some people are, if anything, worse off. For instance, seven families, paying rent totalling £10 a week, share one bathroom and one convenience in a nineroomed house at Burwood. Six of the seven families cook and eat in one kitchen. Each family has a large and fairly well-furnished bedroom, and an adjoining room which has no cooking stove or sink.

One of the women said: "My husband and I pay £2 a week for a bedroom and a room called a kitchenette, which has. no cooking facilities or water supply. There is no cutlery, crockery or bed linen supplied. We manage by pooling what articles each family possesses. For instance, at the moment, the six families who share the kitchen are managing with three lidless saucepans. One woman has only one teaspoon for her own use. You can imagine the confusion in the kitchen with six women trying to prepare different meals with insufficient cooking utensils. Our husbands are all war workers, and earning good money, but we can't find other accommodation."