PITY THE CHILDREN WELLINGTON'S NEED BETTER HOUSING CONDITIONS.

Evening Post, Volume LXXXVII, Issue 68, 21 March 1914, Page 7

PITY THE CHILDREN WELLINGTON'S NEED BETTER HOUSING CONDITIONS.

Tt is over sixty years ago since the earthquake drained Te Aro swamp, turned it into dry land, and incidentally into a capital building site. Nob many years after, where once the small boy of e;vrly Wellington used to pail his boat of flax stick, and snare eels from their lurking places in the raupo, there sprang up a medley 6T miscellaneous dwellings, placed close together, with little o^ no idea of future town-planning. Very many of the original buildings, of course, have disappeared, or been replaced by dwellings almost as primitive, and a walk taken through the congested areas between Willis-street and Cambridge-ter-race reveals surprising evils in the shape of housing. It is difficult to Imagine that this area of ugliness, unredeemed by scarcely one oasis of flowered garden or tree, was once a sea of waving raupo spears. The sky only, in its ever-changing moods, is the same. If anything has a woman's point of view, it is this housing question, which is the material level of the higher question of home-making ; and Wellington, stOl in its youth, has a shameful need of homes. A Post representative paid a visit to come of the streets lying between Cambridge-terrace and Upper Willis-street, and there was revealed, sometimes in a whole street, sometimos in odd out-of-the-way corners, an astonishing lack of sunlight, and air space, and housing. There are dwellings so old and worm-eaten that they are almost "tumbling to pieces, insanitary relics of bygone years ; they are of one, two, three, and four rooms, , where the parents rear children— many of whom are destined to be Wellington's future citizens—who eat, sleep, dress, cook, live, and certainly die, under conditions which, from the woman's point of view, may be described without exaggeration as "soul-destroying." In one apparently respectable street there are two rights-of-way within five yards of one another— one on either side of the street. One, to »H jßeemitie, is merely & side entranc-a to tt houfeo on the street, yet. on exploration, the writer found it led to a miserable throe-roomed structure, wedged in a corner of the back yard of another house. It was sunless and airless ; and there wa& the merest apology for a yard. The place was infested with flies, the sanitary airangements most primitive. One small tap in the yard supplied water for drinking, balhing, and domestic, uses^ The vent paid for this house is ten shillings pet week. ITei, in this dwelling of th)ce rooms a man and his wife and siy children were living. One little giil of eleven, who could not go to school because she must help her mother with the babies, in answer to a question said, "No, we haven't a bathroom. We never have baths—only the babies have baths." There was, moreover, not a corner in the yard, enclosed by a bristling rampart of rusty corrugated iron, where Johnny could play marbles, or Mary use h«r skipping rope. The public street, whe-rc .there is the danger of Hying hoot's, and less tangible but more subtle dangers, is the common playing ground of the child of these areas. Further exploration discovered, too, many of these hidden "backyard" houses —most of them teeming with gay, undaunted child life— the weekly rents of which are anything horn nine shillings up to thirteen shillings. A large number of dwellings open on to the street 5 there is neither privory nor peace. They are innocent of the commonest of conveniences. There: are no sinks for the washing of dishes, no taps — the weary housewite, with a baby on one arm and another dragging at her skirt, perhaps,, must carry every drop of water the uses from the solitary tap in the ywd. There are no cupboards, or coppers, <*• tubs ; the clothes must bo v ashed > from a chair in the yard, and boiled in a kerosene tin over the living room fire. There is no garden space to di-y tliem in, or sunlight to sweeten them. The outlook is in every instance ugly and ( depressing. The streets have the sterility of the desert. There are no shady caves of leafage, there is not even a green leaf, ov spear of grass — the grass seems afraid to grow — or gleam of colour anywhere. In Iwn or three instances tbe'-e were pathetic attempts at flowergrowing, a wistful leaning towards the beautiful. x\ geranium lifted some bravo ecavjet blossoms from a broken piece of ea»"theiware ; itf another yard a tall sunflowrj? reared a disc of gold from a disusej tub, looking oddly lonely, and in, the corner of a dark, unwholesome back place some child — a potential gardenerhad carried a few handfuls of mould, and in it had planted some garden peas, little stragglers predestined to be unfruitful. Flowers and .vegetables, like the children,' need sunshine and air. There are, too, Rome empty houses, haunted by lean, mangy cats and vermin, lei't in such a condition by outgoing tenants as to prove a real menace to public bealfch. A visit, tip-a-fcoe, re« vcaled unspeakable floors, littered with a miscellaneous collection of bottles of ovary shape aad size, discarded clothing, rubbish of every kind. Eickety, primitive stairs led to an upper chamber, where on the window-sill atood a child's forgotteu toy — a tiny blue enamelled jug — a treasure inadvertently left, perhaps, by eomo tiny, dimpled potential mother : it had the effect, in these dreary surroundings, of an unexpected ray ot" sunshine. A little worn shoe lay o« the floor. Jt was, indeed, hard to imagine a child— heir of all the ages, in such sitrrouudings, wbere there could be neither beauty, nor promise, nor joy. Hnre, then, is work for earnest women ; for, from first to last, the housing problem has to be solved in terms not of single life, but of family life and parenthood. Architects and builders are men who look at housing from a man's point of view, but the problem before us is to build not merely houses, but the material outworks of homes, of which woman was the original inventor. Nor is there any chance of supplying houses that women can best turn into horn's until women, who know what sunlight stands for, what grates, and cupboards, and stairs, and taps, count for, uve consulted in this matter.