Time to Clear Slums

Press, Volume LXXXIX, Issue 27035, 9 May 1953, Page 6

Time to Clear Slums

The survey by a Health Department doctor of living conditions in part of the Freeman’s Bay district of Auckland must have shocked many Readers within as well as outside Auckland. Most New Zealanders have realised, in a vague sort of way, that slums Uave grown up in this country, that they are not confined to the larger cities, and that most small towns have their share of sub-standard dwellings, even if they are not concentrated in wholly or largely derelict areas. The value of i Dr. Maijorie Young’s report is that it will bring home to New Zealanders at least some understanding of the health and social consequences of having any considerable number of people living in these distressing conditions. The evils have, of course, been clearly recognised by the Legislature; and the Housing Improvement Act of 1945 appeared to give adequate powers to local authorities to redeem, with Government help, decadent housing areas such as that .at Freeman’s Bay, For one reason and another—mainly the post-war shortage of building resources—the legislation has been little used. The obstacles to slum clearance after the war are now far from insuperable although still formidable. The Auckland survey should convince the Government, local bodies and the

public generally that the time has come for vigorous action in the' spirit of the 1945 legislation. Although the Housing Improvement Act was approved in principle by both political parties and by the great majority of local bodies, it had the weakness common to much of the late Government’s housing policy; it threw upon the local authorities the responsibility for reclaiming slum areas, although the Government, with its State rental house programme, pre-empted a large part of the country’s construction resources. The first essential of

any effective project to clear away slums is to provide reasonable accommodation for the displaced residents. When the imperative need in New Zealand was for a large number of houses as quickly as possible—temporary or transit housing—the former Government would have nothing but permanent homes, which took a year or more to build. Local authorities were left to meet the urgent housing needs of their citizens with transit camps and sub-standard dwellings; and there was no accommodation to spare for displaced residents from condemned slums.

The difficulty persists. The Auckland City Council has been preparing for some time a scheme to clear the worst of the Freeman’s Bay slums and to replace them with flats and dwellings. A loan of £150,000 has been approved for the purpose, and tenders for the first of the new buildings could be let within two or three months. But where are the residents to go in the interval? The council’s transit camps are full; and even when the reconstruction is complete the new buildings will not accommodate all the people now living in this crowded area. The Auckland City Council has asked the Government for a special allocation of 100 State houses; the Government, not unreasonably, has demurred at this very formidable demand. Until the difference is resolved there will not be much progress toward removing this reproach to the city. All would be much simpler if the Government took the prime responsibility for slum clearance as an integral part of it* national housing policy; or, better still, entered into a close working partnership with the local bodies for the purpose. There is neither sense nor logic in the State Housing Department pushing ito settlements further and further out from the cities and towns—at the cost of valuable farm land and an uneconomic extension of services of all kinds—while substantial areas at the centre are allowed to remain in a state of unsavoury decay, to the detriment of the health and general welfare of the whole community.