BUILD MORE HOMES

Auckland Star, Volume LXXIV, Issue 197, 20 August 1943, Page 2

BUILD MORE HOMES

GREAT DOMINION NEED PRIVATE EFFORT ESSENTIAL (By Telegraph.—Parliamentary Eeporter.) • WELLINGTON, this day. Resolutions about the Servicemen's Settlement and Land Sales Bill, adopted at a combined conference of various organisations in Wellington this week, have been forwarded to the Prime Minister, Mr. Fraser. In the opinion of the conference house properties required entirely different treatment from farm lands. It was suggested that there was only one sound method by which the market price of urban lands, and particularly of houses, could be reasonably stabilised. That was by equating supply to demand. The conference urged that, subject to the prior claims of the energetic prosecution of the war, the Government should encourage forthwith a vigorous policy of home building, not only by the State, but more especially by private . enterprise. Pending the nearer equation of supply to demand in the matter of dwellings, a direct subsidy should be made available to returned soldiers for the provision of urban homes. The conference urged ' very strongly that no land legislation other than legislation to provide for a survey of lands suitable for soldier settlement should be introduced to Parliament in the present session. The Dominion organisations at the conference were the Associated Chambers, the Farmers' Federation, the Farmers' Union, the Sheepowners' Federation, the Fruitgrowers' Federation, the Stock and Station Agents' Association, the Real Estate Institute and the Ratepayers' Association. The conference unanimously agreed that any sound measure that Would facilitate the settlement of returned soldiers on freehold land of their own, or on leasehold land with the option of freehold, would have the full support and co-operation of all the bodies represented at the conference, which unanimously agreed that the present bill would not facilitate the successful "settlement of returned soldiers. It was unanimously suggested that the bill confused and complicated two entirely separate issues— the settlement on farm lands of returned soldiers and stabilisation of land prices. The conference therefore urged that these two issues should be kept entirely separate. j