HOUSE RENT

Evening Post, Volume CVI, Issue 102, 27 October 1923, Page 13

HOUSE RENT

TO THE EDITOR.

Sir,—With your permission I desire to offer a few comments on the' recent pronouncement of the Court of Arbitration on the cost of living, particularly that part of the pronouncement which deals with housing costs. I would also like to refer incidentally to the sub-leader on this question that appeared in your issue of the 23rd instant, in which the hope is expressed that some of the dissatisfaction that has been caused by the rent assessment will be dispelled by the Court's explanation, I am very much afraid that the dissatisfaction which has heretofore existed will be considerably increased by the Court's explanation of its illogical and unjust system of assessing housing cost*. The Court, as a result of its calculation, has allowed in its standard wage the sum of 15s 2d per week for. housing. In order to arrive at this sum, it has gone back a considerable number of years, and included houses which were built when costs were not half what they are today, and in this manner it has watered down the figures to a point that is ridiculous in view of present-day conditions. What satisfaction is it to a man who wants a house'to-day to be told that twenty or thirty years ago houses could be built for from £80 to £100 a room, when he knows that at the present day prices the cost will be over double those figures?

In what is known as the "Big Ben" case, taken under the Board of Trade Act, 1919, the Supreme Court held that traders were justified in fixing their prices, not on what the goods cost them, but on the cost of replacement of such goods. If this principle were just and equitable in connection with the sale of alarm clocks, surely it follows as a logical sequence that 'it should also apply in the assessment of the housing costs of the workers

It is a well recognised economic principle that if a business or an industry will not produce sufficient to provide for renewals, such business or industry must inevitably go out of existence in a given time. It is equally certain that if the wages of workers are not sufficient to provide for the . renewal of houses, then houses must at an early date be a thing of the past as far as the wageworkers are concerned.

. To sum up the position: The Court allows 15s 2d a week for housing. The very lowest figure at which a four-room-ed house can be built, including land is £1000. The Government has allowed 8 per cent. as.a fair return on hous--I£&<propertie- £1000.at. 8 per cent is £80 per year, or £1 /Os 9d per week, or more than double the amount allowed by the Court. Every year hundreds of people arrive here from overseas who want houses; every year hundreds of yonng > couples arrive at an age when they want to marry, and they require houses. Every year hundreds of houses are condemned as unfit for habitation and new ones are required for those who previoußly occupied these houses. A large percentage of the above-mentioned people are wage-workers whose -rates of remuneration are fixed by the Court of Arbitration, which allows only 15s 2d a.week for' housing. How are they to provide houses when the cost is over double that aojount? This is a question which requires a roply, and seeing thatyou have spofcen so approvingly of the-Court 1, "so clearly and logically stated _ dec lslOn , you may possibly supply the answer.. The question is : Are the workers to Jive m houses, or are they to.t?o back to the caves and the tree-tops, like their prehistoric ancestors ?-J am, etc., otti, n_* t A- OAKLAND. 26th October.