Labour and Housing

Press, Volume LXXXIX, Issue 27090, 13 July 1953, Page 8

Labour and Housing

The Labour Party policy on housing, as expounded by the president (Mr Nordmeyer), is a mixture of realism and vote-catching. The party now admits that the rents of State houses must be raised when necessary to cover increased costs and that most New Zealanders (perversely, it may seem to Socialists) want to own their houses. Failure to give proper weight to these facts while Labour was in power contributed to the housing shortage. On the other hand, Mr Nordmeyer is still talking airily of money at 3 per cent, and of quickly increasing the rate of housebuilding to 20,000 a year. Any homebuilder wants to get his money at the lowest possible rate; but it must now generally be recognised that with the present demand for capital in New Zealand the only way housing loans can be made at 3 per cent, is by a heavy subsidy of some sort, either directly, by requiring the taxpayers to make up the balance of the market rate, or by inflating the currency. The effect of either course on taxation, the cost of living and the soundness of institutions that promote savings would probably be

disastrous. Even in the field of housing the last state might easily be worse than the first. Mr Nordmeyer makes it clear that of his 20,000 houses a year no more than 5000 would be State rental houses; but .he has not said anything to reverse the implication of earlier speeches that the total number is to be reached by diverting labour and materials from other building work to houses. Though it might not be impossible to step up the rate of construction from the present figure of 15,000 a year to 20,000, it should not be done at the expense of other important construction works. New Zealand needs hospitals, schools, industrial and commercial buildings, and various public buildings almost as much as it needs houses; and in some cases the need is probably more urgent. Improvements in design are one way in which some progress might be made, both in speeding construction and making building cheaper. That is what the present Government is trying to do, without any noticeably enthusiastic support from the Labour Party. The Labour Party gives the general impression of believing that the last word on house design was said when it planned State houses in 1936. Labour politicians have been apt to see any departure from what has become conventional as a lowering in standards. However, it is a big advance to have the Labour Party admit that State house rents should bear a reasonable relationship to costs. General recognition of this principle should have an influence over the whole field of housing, because State house rentals have set a fictitiously low criterion, not wholly adjusted by the present Government’s policy of raising rents only for new tenancies. In the 1951-52 financial year the loss on some 34,000 State houses was £233,502, and it must have been close to that again last year.