HOUSING CONDITIONS

Evening Post, Volume CIX, Issue 131, 6 June 1925, Page 6

HOUSING CONDITIONS

AUCKLAND'S DIFFICULTIES SIMILAR TO THOSE OF WELLINGTON. ■h-cu.iaph —special to ras post.} AUCKLAND, This Day. Conditions regarding housing in Wellington disclosed during the present week have their parallel i n Auckland. Tho story is that of five families at Point Chevalier, five miles from the city who have just received notice from the City Council to vacate tents on their own sections in which they are now residing. There are 20 children, the eldest about 12 years, and. the youngest nine months old, living i n those cheerless homes. One family of nine-father, mother, and seven children-whose ages range from eleven years to nine months, are hying in a motor-car packing casa and a tent containing three beds. There, are cracks in the boarding of the shed, on f£ lle ,%? id rab beat checked on the unboarded canvas of oils "bed- £ om- , Th?ro is no fireplace, and cooking is done in an oil-drum mounted on a, benzine tin just outside the door. The sole furnishing of the living K, om is I table, an old couch, and a sewin.r machine with which the mother malres all the c othes for her brobd. A tiny square of glass on either side of the shack supplies the light, and an open door and he cracks in the wall give ample yt£ tuation. . There is another makeshift home on just the same lines, save that it has an open fireplace and a tin chimney, a third home boaste _a range, and another consists of a single big tent and a tiny A° r« a f ?u te- d itoll shed with a fireplace. A fifth is a neat little rbugh-cast oneioom dwelhng, with a stove at one end ft slee]? mS accommodation at the other end.- , .-■ :■■.,.„■■. .-., ■ ..... ._., The words of a mother of a'farnilv oi seven shed an illuminating light on the modern conditions of life for a family trying to exist on a wage of £4 10s a week, conditions which have been cheerfully exchanged for the rigours of life ma tent in mid-winter : "I simply dread what may be ahead," she said. "We were chivied from pillar to post until I was almost desperate, and I thought when we came here that wo were at last on the way to getting a little home of our own. -It has been very hard, what with rain, mud, and no conveniences, but none of us has been any tha worse for it in health, and 1 would rather have it like this a hundred times over than go back to rooms in the city. If you only knew what we have gone through. We rented a little placs for five years, and then it was sold over our heads. We then paid £2 a week for three rooms, but there was drinking going on all around, and there was nowhere for the children to play but out in the street. I simply could not bring them up decently under such conditions. It is very rough and poor here, but there is plenty of room for them to play outside when the weather is good, and they have all been ever so much brighter and healthier since we came. If they turn us out I don't know what we.shall do. We were going to put in a stove, line the walls, "and fix the place up a bit, but it is no use if we have to go. It just seems to have taken the heart out of me. How can I go hunting for rooms with seven children to look after? And who will take us?" "We would never have come, but for 'the assurance of the ageiit that we would be allowed to pat up a tent." said another mother, who, with her husband and four children, are living under canvas.. "Half my husband's salary was going in rent, and nothing to show for it in the end, so we thought we would bo better off by roughing it here for a while, and geting a Government loan to buiM later on. We are doing it solely for the sake of the children, and so long as we are happy and contented, what does it matter to anybody else?" That was the burden of each woman's story. The children were well and happy; they were all undergoing hardships, but these were as nothing compared with the miseries of existence in a crowded lodginghouse. It was the hope of better things, of ultimately securing a home of their own, that seemed to be buoying; them up to the endurance of the "present conditions." "Instead of turning us out, why can't the council help us?"" asked another worried, young mother. "We are not drunken, dissolute people that they should bo so. anxious to get rid of us. The inspector talks of public health and lack of sanitation and water supply. We have had a regular sanitary service for weeks past, and water pipes aro now being laid down the main road. I think the council would be showing a better spirit if they helped us to get the water and drainage instead of "turning us out of our homes after we have hail to put up with all tho worst of the hardships of winter?" These people declare that if they are evicted they will not only be homeless. : but will lose their sections and whatever they have paid on them to complete the purchase, for what they will have to pay ! in rent will make it quite impossible I for them to complete the purchase j agreement. Each one of the five homes, and each one of the mothers was visited by an "Auckland Herald" representative, and interviewed. Clear-cut and definite was the. impression left by the investigation, Ilia* the eviction of these people in tl.vee. months' time as contemplated will lie an act of harshness. It.will take the heart out of five families trying desperately hard to make little homes on their own land, and condemn their return to ii life which they know only too well, i and which they utterly abhorC