STATE HOUSING SCHEME

Press, Volume LXXII, Issue 21976, 28 December 1936, Page 8

STATE HOUSING SCHEME

PRINCIPLES CONSIDERED UNSOUND CRITICISM BY MR P. J. O’REGAN [THE PRESS Special Service.] WELLINGTON, December 26. The opinion that the State housing scheme is doomed to failure because it is fundamentally unsound was expressed by Mr P. J. O’Regan, Wellington barrister, in an interview with a reporter. Mr O’Regan said he admitted at once that there was a housing problem just as there was an unemployed problem, hut both, he said, were merely aspects of the one fundamental problem—that of the private appropriation of the community value of land. Anyone who cared to use his eyes could see the effects of this evil everywhere throughout the country. New Zealand was more than six times the size of Denmark, but with less than half her population, and although everybody knew that the best assets a nation could have were people, the Dominion appeared to be overcrowded, not merely in the towns, but also in the country. For this alarming state of affairs there was only one explanation—the blockade of land. Most people called landowners had too much land—too much for their own purposes, and certainly too much for the public interest. The remedy was simple, obvious, and effective—taxation on the community value of land without exemption. “The rate of the tax.” continued Mr O'Regan, “is a matter of practical politics, but we Henry George men insist that the whole of the community value belongs to the people, and should be taken in lieu of all other taxation. To begin with, the rating-on-unimproved values system could be made mandatory, and the national land tax made heavy enough to put an end to all speculation in land. Encouraging Building "Building is one of our most important local industries, but the very best encouragement we can give it is to untax it and make land cheap. We maintain that it is not the business of the Government to build houses for anyone—unless it be prisons and mental hospitals. The most competent man to build a house is the man who is going to occupy it. It is no more the business of the Government to supersede private enterprise in this connexion than it is the business of the Government to find work for people. Save as a temporary expedient. it is not the function of the Government to find work for any man, but it should be the business of the Government to propose legislation by which every man will have the chance to employ himself, to build his own house, and to do everything he has a right to do, and the condition precedent is cheap land. “Superficial critics talk about the taxation of the unimproved value of land as though it were purely a question affecting farmers. Here are a few figures which will put the real position beyond all doubt: the total area of the counties is 102,796 square miles and the capital value of the land comprised in that area is £330,192,157, of which the unimproved value is £185.673.752. We have about 120 boroughs, of which the total area is 268,307 acres, or barely 420 square miles, and the capital value is £299,707,631, of which the unimproved value is £112,865,542. The total area of the four chief cities is 60,138 acres and the capital value is £155.274,134, of which the unimproved value is £65,201,216. Private Enterprise • “To those who say that private enterprise has failed to solve the housing question my reply is that which G. K. Chesterton gave to the critics who said that Christianity has failed—it has not been tried. The building trade is hampered in every possible way by unjust and impolitic taxation. You cannot name an item of building material—roofing iron, cement, nails, paints—that is not subject to heavy customs taxation; indeed, 40 per cent, of our total tax revenue is indirect. The main obstacle to the building industry, however, is dear land. The bottom side of every building is necessarily a piece of ground and as long as we tolerate a system which enables people to grow rich merely by trafficking in land instead of using it we shall have a housing problem. Accordingly, it is absurd to suggest that the State, by going into the building business, will solve the problem. The fundamental objection to the scheme is that the taxpayers must buy what already belongs to them and that is the real reason why there is no opposition to the proposal. Land monopoly will certainly prefer to be bought rather than taxed out, but the plain fact is that it can never be bought cut. There have been housing schemes innumerable in other countries, England included, every one of which involved the purchase of land, end not one has been a success. The present so-called National Government in England is supposed to be making war on slums and has embarked on a house-building policy, but nobody takes the scheme seriously. It is merely juggling with the question. More than 40 years ago we embarked in this country on a system ,of buying land for settlement. We have spent* millions in buying off large estates, but the only people who have done well out of the scheme are the expropriated owners, who reaped where they never sowed and who got the taxpayers’ money in hard cash for a value they never made. This would not matter so much if the question had been settled, but the land question remains just where it was 40 years ago, indeed, the situation is worse, because there is no unappropriated Crown land worth having. Where Will it End? “Of course, any scheme that is fundamentally unsound will have unexpected repercussions, all of them disastrous. The question to ask ourselves about this housing scheme is: Where is it going to end? When the State has built a sufficiency of houses will it be able to go out of business? Exactly the same question arises concerning the public works that are now go-