The Dominion. TUESDAY, OCTOBER 2, 1944. THE NATIONAL NEED.

Dominion, Volume 38, Issue 7, 3 October 1944, Page 4

The Dominion. TUESDAY, OCTOBER 2, 1944. THE NATIONAL NEED.

There will be general agreement with certain of the objectives, in respect to housing, set out by the president (Mr, R. A. Large) of the Wellington branch of the New Zealand Real Estate Institute in his report to the annual meeting of that body. The housing problem in this country, complicated as it is by shortages of labour and material, has assumed serious proportions. Lack of homes is causing hardship and handicap, and threatens also to disrupt the vital process of soldier rehabilitation, which has already begun and may soon be rapidly accelerated. In view of this situation, and also of the mounting evidence of the Government’s failure to contrive a thoroughly comprehensive plan for the assembly of our building resources, many people have come to feel that there is inescapable peed for a national organization, completely free of sectional or political ( influence, with power to promote and supervise housing development. | The idea of a central, co-ordinating authority of this kind is not new. It has been put forward from time to time as a means whereby private building enterprise—and in particular the multitude of small builders—could be enabled to play an effective part in meeting the| •national shortage. Mr. Large’s proposal crystallizes that idea. A housing construction board, such as he describes, in addition to taking action to reduce the excessively high cost to the public of building materials, could prevent perpetuation of various handicaps that have beset private enterprise in recent years—handicaps in respect to supplies, handicaps in respect to labour, and—last but by no means least —handicaps in respect to terms and conditions of contract tendering. Such a body should also be in a position to establish a housing programme in which the activities of the State Housing .Department and those of local bodies, business organizations and private individuals would become complementary, in the best interests of the community. , Before abnormal war conditions descended upon the industry as: a whole, there were signs that State organization was moving in the direction of the gradual elimination of private building enterprise—and that, in consequence, home ownership by the mass of the people was threatened with eventual extinction. Of late it has been frequently denied that any such intention existed, and in support of these denials] attention is directed to the comparatively substantial part still being played by the private builder in meeting some part of the expanding demand for new homes. The truth is that private enterprise has, played an invaluable, and perhaps unexpected, part in conjunction withthe restricted State scheme, in overtaking some of the leeway, and has, earned not only present-day recognition but the right to develop, without handicap, in the post-war era. For the promotion of that development, side by side with the necessary expansion of the State scheme, an independent, non-political housing authority would be a great national safeguard. As a State organization, politically controlled, the Housing Department does not fulfil that function in the comprehensive way the country so urgently requires, or that the people have grown most anxiously to expect.