SLUM TO SUBURB

Evening Post, Volume CXIII, Issue 30, 5 February 1927, Page 8

SLUM TO SUBURB

HUTT GAEDEN HOMES

ECONOMICS OF WORKERS'

SCHEME

BETTERMENT PAID, YET OLD

BOOM-KENT HALVED

Workers' homes completed or almost completed under the Hutt railway and garden suburb scheme number 125, and selected families move in as fast as the homes are ready. The first twenty-eight families have f/rand that their rent per room is halved. And for this halved weekly payment they get not only the room, but^ll the internal and external conveniences of a real home, and they possess as instal-ment-paying owners, not as mere tenants.

The families have come almost exclusively from houses condemned by the authorities as unfit for habitation (yet houses that continue in ■Wellington, year after year, for lack of others) or from places of joint occupancy or sub-tenancy (such places being generally two or three rooms in a building that is occupied by more than one family, with but one set of conveniences). The families are families with children, some with many children. They have been selected from among many applicants. . -^

Picture the transformation that occurs when a hundred families whose rents averaged about 30s a week (some, of course, much higher) are transferred from their rack-rented dens to fiveroomed homes, which will become their own in 36 years for 21s 9d a week!

A STKIKING COMPARISON.

An analysis made of the circumstances of the first 28 families presents some points of interest. They consist of 164 persons, of whom 108 are childran. Before the workers' homes were provided, they occupied—in various parts of Wellington and Greater Wellington—B6 rooms," including kitchens, at the rate of nearly two persons per room; and there were several pases of three persons per room. Now, in the Hutt workers' home garden suburb—called "Mandel's Block," but badly needing a better name—they occupy 140 iron™, or at the rate of one and one-sixth persons per room. Formerly they shared conveniences with strangers, or were,in ' houses without proper services Now each family has its own homo, with all conveniences garden, and town-planned environment! Tv kly rent fiKures of the new and the oldr orders compare as under:

Old. '■ ■ New., Kent per room ...... o% % £ 0 \ % Kent per family 19 1 l ■> n Total rent 28 families 40 14 0 30 16 0 And. remember that the new payment is not a rent. It includes interest and sinking fund to cover the 36 years within which the worker secures debtfree ownership—but does not include borough, rates. The direct reduction in the payment per week per fajnily is at least seven shillings (representing practically a;s?/Jing a day added to the breadwinner's wage), and there is all the moral betterment of really owning a real home, in which every family is secure as long as its weekly less-than-rent is paid. . .

Tho reduction in the cost per room as shown in the above table, is more than 50 per cent.!

MANY OLIVE BRANCHES.

There were ICB children in the families occupying the first 45 homes. The cost of the first fifty homes (fi\ rooms and all conveniences) is £733 each, of which £658 is the cost of the house itself. That leaves £75 to cover fencing, water and sewer connections, concrete paths and yard, interest on money used» for construction, valuation fees, and general supervision. The land was purchased in block for the sum of £250 per acre; after being sewered, served with stormwater drainage, high pressure water, modern roads and footpaths, and after baing charged with the cost of interest, surveys, and all expenses, and with £40 per section "as betterment profit to the Crown," the cost of the section (one-sixth of an acre) stands in at £160. So it would seem that no charge was forgotten— "betterment" evidently was not when the weekly instalment of 21s 9d was being arrived at.

' One 12J-acre block that was handed over to the administering committee-^----the Hutt Housing Committeer-by the Department of Lands was figured out as follows: Cost £3250, interest. £325 administration £372, survey £100, estimated profit or "betterment" £2153. The £2153 represents. £28 13 s 4d per acre on the 12$ acres, ashanded.over; out of that area (after loading, etc.), 50 workers' home sections were carved, so the "betterment" amounted to a charge of £43 per section. With regard to "betterment," it was recognised from the beginning, when the Government took up the land-pur-chase options secured from private owners by Mr. W. T. Strand, that the land was to be subdivided and disposed of, at a profit, if possible, which profit (or "betterment") should be a set-off against the high cost- of building the railway. Evidently the cost of a railway, through a residential quarter, and through a quarter likely to become immediately residential, must be high, because busy streets have to be elevated by means of huge ramps that will probably teach cost five figures, and m this case a 'river.has to be jumped over by means of a massive bridge of ■ many spans, while the railway itself must be crossed by overbridges at the stations (three in number) now being erected. It is easy, therefore, to build up an argument for expense and "betterment." Railways have always hoped to recover part of their cost out of the enhanced values of the laud they open, as well as revenue out of the increased production of those lands The Canadian land concession system is i easo in point.

DUAL CHARACTER OF SCHEME. In the Hntt land scheme, however there is a auite novel element in that it is dual in character. As subdivision proceeds, some of the land is sold, as a-nbuilt-on sections, to the highest bidder at auction, and some of it is provided with complete workers' homes which are disposed of to selected families. Many people who would agree to exacting the highest "betterment" possiblesput of the private bidder for sections might object to putting a "bet terment" on the workers' homo sections It is evident that any "betterment" charged by the Lands Department when it hands over to the Hutt Housing Committee the land for workers homes must be reflected proportion- ?« £'« I vCekl y in stalmenl payment to be fixed by the committee for the worker, to pay. The less the "better ment" charge, the less the worked weekly instalment. workers

The question is one of policy, not to be dealt with in this article. The main fact is that the land when handed to^the committee is loaded with a "better meat" charge which has been working out at £40 per section. The land fof workers' homes is not, as some people may think, handed over to the committee at bare cost.

To date, over one hundred workers' homes iave been built, and well over

one hundred sections of lands have been sold at auction (or privately after auction) at prices that should expedite building. At that rate of progress, it is likely that by the end of the year 500 new houses will have been, created under the scheme.

The first 50 families in the workers' homes number 284 souls, including 184 children, so they are considerably over five to the family. The people who buy at auction may not have so large a proportion of chicks. But if the 500 homes are filled with five-member families, the total population added by the scheme to the Hutt railway and garden suburb will be 2500 souls.

And the miserable tenements they vacate tvill be quickly reoccupied!