Maoris Badly Housed

Press, Volume CVII, Issue 31381, 29 May 1967, Page 3

Maoris Badly Housed

(N.Z. Press Association) WELLINGTON, May 28. More than onequarter of Maori homes are overcrowded, unsound and unsatisfactory, a fouryear survey by the Maori Affairs Department in the North Island has shown. Some 3500 homes are required to replace unsatisfactory, unsound dwellings, says

the report on the survey. This is more than four times the average annual number built by the department in recent years. “The survey has confirmed that there are still many Maori families, particularly in the more isolated areas, living in unsound or overcrowded homes,” says the report. In some areas—including Gisborne and Wanganui—the percentage of unsatisfactory houses among Maori homes tops or approaches 40 per cent. The survey did not include Auckland, Wellington or the Hutt Valley, the second biggest cehtre for Maoris after Auckland. In both Auckland and Wellington overcrowding is common and many Maori families live in unsatisfactory or. unsound houses in poor areas. The welfare officers who made the survey found 5111 unsatisfactory houses, 2492 of which were sound, but overcrowded. Nearly 1400 houses were both unsound and overcrowded.

The proportion of Maoriowned dwellings is 61.85 per cent considerably higher than in the 1961 census (49.8 per cent).

Nearly half of the 5889 home-owners surveyed . had built with the assistance of the department. Another 1449 had State Advances loans. Of 5709 tenanted houses, 51 per cent, or 2939, were supplied

by employers and 952 by the State. • Overcrowded houses were generally considered to be those with more than two people to a room, says the report. Action has been taken to improve the situation, says the report.