State Advances lends $850m

Press, Volume CXI, Issue 32588, 23 April 1971, Page 4

State Advances lends $850m

The State Advances Corporation had lent $B5O million for housing during the last 10 years, the Minister of Housing (Mr Rae) said in Christchurch.

Addressing the annual conference of the Institute ofi Building Inspectors, he said that of the $448 million spent on buildings in the 1969-70 financial year, $221 million had gone on housing. During the last six years the permits for flats and houses had varied annually between 21,000 and 23,000 and the total permit figures for all buildings had been $2304 milion. Considering the number of flats and houses that had been built during his ministry the number of justifiable complaints he had received were very few, said Mr Rae. "This must be a tribute to the work of our master builders and to the inspections given while the work was in progress,” he said. “Most houses do not have an architect, the owner has little or no knowledge of building and therefore must lean heavily on builders and inspectors to see that he gets a workmanlike job. “Last year your attention was drawn to the fact that substandard timber grades were being used in dwellings. Departmental building inspectors have their own responsibilities in this respect but houses built by or with finance provided by Government account for only about half the houses built annually. “It is necessary then to rely upon close supervision by local body inspectors to safeguard the position in the nonGovernment sector.

"Your institute can educate in this matter and in so doing you will improve your own

public image and that of the {organisation you serve.” Mr Rae said that houses were as well built today as they had ever been and were: better designed for modem' living. If the prediction of five million population by the turn of the century was correct, the New Zealand housing stock would have to be duplicated to provide for the increase and the replacement of outworn dwellings and those lost through urban development, commercial purposes and motorways. “It appears that for at least the next 30 years we can expect extensive building programmes. This will be largely in the residential field with demand not only for single unit houses but also for town houses and flats in blocks ranging from single storey to multi-storeys,” he said.