REDUCING COST OF HOUSING

Press, Volume LXXXIX, Issue 27064, 12 June 1953, Page 10

REDUCING COST OF HOUSING

CHANGE IN BYLAWS URGED

STATEMENT BY BUILDERS’ PRESIDENT (New Zealand Press Association) WELLINGTON, June 11. “If building costs are to be reduced, a star? must be made at the drawing board to create something different from the State house designed in 1936,” said the president of the New Zealand Master Builders’ Federation (Mr R. H. Davis) today. Mr Davis congratulated the Government on its “wise action” in calling foxcompetitive designs and ideas for a lower cost house, but he said that, to take full advantage of new materials and changes in design, amendments would have to be made to by-laws and to the standard code of building bylaws issued by the Standards Institute for wooden houses. Mr Davis said the major Government scheme for the erection of Stale rental houses was .inaugurated about 1936, and the standard of these houses had become the accepted minimum standard for most moderately-priced private housing. The general layout and specification had also become universally used for such houses. “Over the 17 years since State rental housing was introduced, costs have risen by more than 125 per cent., but up to the present, little or no attempt has been made to reduce costs by modification of the specification,” he said. “In fact, there have been several changes in specification which have added considerably to the cost. “Just as the 1936 State house was an on houses built in the 1920’5, so should the 1953 house be an advance on the 1935-52 State house,” he added. “A contemporary design meeting simpler standards will provide an appreciably cheaper house. “If the present Government-spon-sored house design competition brings to light the advanced ideas which we anticipate it will, we hope the Government will have the courage to remodel the standard by-laws and make them universal,” he said.