Squalid Housing

Press, Volume LXXVII, Issue 23447, 30 September 1941, Page 6

Squalid Housing

Through the purchase of 15 houses which can be let at a low rental to large families, the Government has.cracked the hard problem of slum-standard housing in Christchurch. The new tenants of these houses will vacate others, now dilapidated; and the Christchurch City Council, which has been invited by the State Advances Corporation to co-operate, agreed last night to see to it that the empty houses are either condemned or else fitted for habitation before they are reoccupied. Co-operation could have begun, perhaps, one stage sooner. The council is able to chart the trouble, house by house; and the corporation might have asked where it would be best to begin. But the main thing is that a beginning has been made. Condemned houses will cease to be occupied. Houses that should be condemned will be condemned, because action will be effective. Hitherto it has not been. Years after they have been condemned, houses have been tenanted still, because the law obliges the council to find tenants another dwelling before ordering them to leave. Meanwhile, the condemned house falls from bad repair into worse, for obvious reasons; and the sub-standard house generally goes the same way. Against this tendency, which makes slums and keeps them slums, there is now some chance of making headway; and the council should use it vigorously. It remains a handicap, however, that the City Council. the Drainage Board, the Fire Board, and the Department of Health all have powers to regulate and inspect and issue orders in regard to structures or to sanitary conditions or to both. Under this division of authority, however, regulation has advanced uncertainly and is far from setting and maintaining adequate minimal standards of health, decency, and safety in hoxxsing. Too little is often required; too much is often tolerated. So far as the houses now to be dealt with are such as have already been condemned or clearly should be condemned, the council may be expected to decide promptly and act firmly. The danger is that, where it seems possible to make a house habitable by repairs, the authorities will not lay down sufficiently strict conditions. They may not be able to agree upon them. They may find themselves embarrassed rather than aided by their regulations, if they do agree. Yet the occasion is clearly of a sort which they should be ready to use progressively; and the effort should be made, even if it has to be the irksome effort of overcoming technical difficulties instead of pleading them as excuses. Finally, the start that can be made now should lead further, or the gain will be trivial. The State Advances Corpoi’ation has asked for the council’s help in completing and protecting one small measure of improvement. The council, more than two months ago, called upon its bylaws and finance committee and the townplanning and building committee, to devise a plan of action to get rid of slum-standard housing. Such a plan can be harmonised with the State’s policy, administered by the corporation; and the connexion should be sought and established.