FLATS FOR OLD PEOPLE

Press, Volume LXXVII, Issue 23414, 22 August 1941, Page 8

FLATS FOR OLD PEOPLE

SITE IN CITY TO BE BOUGHT

GOVERNMENT’S PROPOSAL

(P.R.) WELLINGTON,' August 21. The Cabinet has authorised the purchase of a block of .one. acre and a half facing Victoria street on on(j side and Montreal street on the other, on which flats for old people will be erected. -This was announced by the Minister for Housing (the Hon. H. T. Armstrong) this morning. Elderly bachelors lived in shanties on the site at present, said the Minister, and it was proposed to pulldown the old buildings and erect flats for old people. There would be room for about 53 units of varying sizes as flats, but if the blocks were given over solely to bachelor flats there would be room for between 70 and 75 units. There were one or two dwellings on the site that were habitable, but they would possibly be shifted somewhere else.

When building work started, it would be done in three sections, so that people residing in the old shacks could be transferred to the new homes as .they were completed. Mr Armstrong added that the site was ideal for the purpose, as it was within a few minutes walk of the Square, and it was certainly no use putting old people in suburbs a long way from the centre of the city. Mr Armstrong said that the Cabinet had also authorised the purchase of a block in Dunedin for a similar purpose, and in Auckland a number of flats of that description were being built at the present time. The new Christchurch block would be laid out so that every unit received the benefit of all available sunshine. Recent Deputation “I know that such conditions prevail in Christchurch, and, bad and all as they are, the conditions in Wellington and Auckland are even worse,” said Mr Armstrong in commenting on representations made by a deputation which waited on the City Council urging improvement in housing conditions. Mr Armstrong said that points raised by the deputation from the National Council of Women in Christchurch had been given very serious consideration by him for a long time. Twice, while in Christchurch, he had been interviewed by the same women, and he could not help being impressed by their representations. It was on account of such "Conditions that he was particularly . anxious to get the Slum Clearance Bill on . the Statute Book. They had succeeded in rescuing many people from slum conditions and had put them into good State rental houses, only for other families to take their place in the slum dwellings, so that the problem remained. He could give instances of where three different families had been rescued from the same slum and placed in State houses, and there was still another family in the slum home. Until there was power for such buildings to be declared unfit for human habitation, the problem could not be solved. The bill would contain provisions giving power v to have a building either demolished or to compel it to be brought up to a reasonable living standard, for it was necessary to make sure that once people had been taken out of abominable conditions of living the problem relating to the particular buildings had been solved and no one else lived in them. As soon as it was possible, also, they wanted to make better provision for old people.