Redevelopment Of City Housing Urged

Press, Volume XCIX, Issue 29325, 3 October 1960, Page 8

Redevelopment Of City Housing Urged

Proposals for the rehousing of tenants of shim houses, plans for the development of urban housing and suggested legislation that would enable these proposals to be carried out, were included in a report presented at a town planning seminar arranged by the Adult Education Department of the University of Canterbury.

Dr. L. L. Pownall, professor of geography at Canterbury University, said severe measures were needed to carry out many of the proposals.

While proposed housing development should aim at providing for a cross-section of the community, there were families who were unsuitable for inclusion in a new area, said the report. These so-called “problem families" denoted several classes of tenant and included: congenitally dirty families, criminal and immoral families, alcoholics and any family requiring special attention. Professor Pownall suggested that these families should be placed in suitable training centres where they could be taught the fundamentals of personal hygiene, home cleanliness and home management. If they were allowed to go into a new housing area without this training they would quickly turn the new house into a slum. A Magistrate’s order would be necessary to place a problem family in a training centre. Only when the family showed it was capable of proper adjustment would it be allowed to move into a house and even then would be on probation. The majority of problem families had an abnormally large number of children. Unless spme educational programme was given to the children it could be assumed they would in the future adopt the same way of living as their parents. Home Ownership The report recommended that State rental houses should be reduced, with an increase of home ownership with subsidised mortgages, for it had been found that where a house was owned it was better looked after.

Regulations in New Zealand cities seemed to be based on the assumption that a slum was less likely to occur where each building unit was surrounded by land. The result was a widely scattered and sparsely covered city of often unwilling gardeners. Terrace housing in Christchurch was virtually prohibited by existing regulations. This he regarded as wrong, said Professor Pownall.

The local authorities could experiment with terrace-housing and smaller section under its absolute control and could sell such buildings to owner-occu-piers. The report said that builders

and developers preferred to go towards the edge of the city to vacant land simply because there was no restriction of site, land was available immediately, there was generally better access and there was no preliminary demolition.

Lure of Open Spaces On the other hand in central areas there was often provision to be made for road widening,

car parks and opeq areas, all of which reduced the effective area. The advantages of establishing new housing, industry and commerce near the centre of the city were obvious but under present conditions were outweighed by the lure of the open spaces. To attract private enterprise to the central area these factors had to be overcome as far as possible. In the city there had been no large multi-storey blocks of flats built for many years either by private enterprise or by the Government. Private enterprise had undertaken reclamation in scattered areas only. Examples based on actual costs showed that under present conditions multistorey flats would not be economical on the rent that could be expected in the city at present. Cheaper loan money should be granted to those wanting to build in the city. The perimeter building was largely State subsidised in the form of cheap loans and pegged section prices. Why could not central areas have similar advantages? Controls would be necessary to prevent exploitation of cheap money although the report considered that any form of tight money, such as the Fair Rents Act, tended to discourage private enterprise. It was felt that though first consideration had to be given to replacing decaying residential areas in the city with new high density housing, there was also the question of light industry to be considered. The decayed residential areas were inextricably linked with industry. The suggestion was made that when industry was purchasing land due regard should be had for the better planning of industrial sites so they were of suitable size and shape and avoided the pockets of residences which often turned into slums.