SLUMS OR FLATS?

Evening Post, Volume LXXXIX, Issue 125, 28 May 1915, Page 4

SLUMS OR FLATS?

SOCIAL WORKER'S PROBLEMS. From the lush paddocks and grasscovered hills of the Rangifcikei Archdeacon Harper, of Palmerston North, came to the city of Wellington. In the one place he had to face the spiritual and social problems of a conntry town, and in the other the spiritual and social problems of a city. He left his mark upon Palmerston in various social activities with which he had been actively and intimately associated, and the spiritual work he did there is to be seen in the strikingly handsome new church in the Square but recently opened, and shortly (it is hoped) to be freed from debt and consecrated. What struck the Archdeacon most in Wellington was its slums. In the course of an interview on this subject the Evening Post learned that the Archdeacon was familiar with Wellington very many years before he became Vicar of St. Peter's, but as a Wellington parish priest he naturally became more familiar with it and its people and, if it must bo confessed, somewhat appalled at times by the social problems the city offered for solution. "There are social problems in Wellington," he said, "as serious as you'll meet with anywhere. Take the housing problem, for instance. That is a serious matter. There is in Wellington, aa in all large cities, a large element in the population who will not live out of the city, its bustle and noise, its life in the streets. Quicker and cheaper transit to the suburbs will not induce such to leave the city. Of course, the men want to be near their work. I know that ; but the necessarily limited amount of land in the city and its peculiar configuration are formidable obstacles that have to be overcome. The class of habitation soch people have to live in and the rents demanded for them offer a problem that the municipal authorities should at once" seriously consider and endeavour to solve without delay. The conditions in which hundreds of children are living in Wellington city are such as to be "conducive to ill-health and to immorality. The poor people should be able to obtain homes in which they could live with a certain amount of decency. I believe that a system of flats, dwellings similar to those in London and" other large cities, would go far to help the people and replace the slum areas. Take Haining-street and Frederick-street ; look at the ground the houses cover in that block. Why, how many people could be properly housed in flats in that area, and with ample land all round the blocks, too ? Surely ,the municipal authorities could consider this. I have seen the interiors of working people's residential flats in London. . They are kept clean, are very comfortable and convenient, and are constructed on thoroughly hygienic lines. Moreover, they meet the case of people who must live near their work in the locality. Flat life may not be an ideal existence, but can one point to a better way of solving Wellington's slum problem and meeting the case of those who must or will live in the city or as near to its heart as they can. get, no matter how unsuitable 1 and costly such conditions may be?"