OUR BIGGEST ADVANCE

Evening Post, Volume CXIII, Issue 31, 7 February 1927, Page 10

OUR BIGGEST ADVANCE

HUTT WORKERS' HOMES

SOCIOLOGICAL ACHIEVEMENT

Taking the weekly payment on a Hutt worker's home as being roundly 22s (it is working out at some pence under that), the payment represents 25 per cent., or one quarter, of a weekly wage of £4 Bs. ,

In order to further test the position "The Post" selected, at random, eight typical cases of families that have recently entered into possession ni Hutt workers' homes, and found that the average wage of the breadwinner was £4 10s, so tfhat the weekly payment is a shade under one quarter of the wage. But when the average rent paid by them in their' previous tenements was checked off against the average wage, it was found that the percentage rose to 30 per cent. In two cases out of the eight the old rent used to consume more than 33 per cent, of the worker's

wage.

In a Hutt worker's home 'the owner of a £4 8s weekly wage has a 25 per cent, weekly instalment which will make him a debt-free .owner, instead of being a tenant with a 30 per cent, rent, and no ownership prospect. The reduction in rent per room is still more startling. A little figuring as between a 30s three-roomed tenement and a 22s five-roomed house with all conveniences, and section, speaks for itself.

The weekly wage in the eight cases analysed ranges from £4 to £5 4s 6d. The wage per person varies according to the size v£ the family. In a ease where there are seven children, the wage per person (that is, the wage divided by the number of persons in the family) is as low as 9s. In a sixchildren family it is 10s. It is highest in a two-children family, where the four members count for £1 5s each in a £5 wage. One man earns 4s fid per week more than that, but as lie and his wife have three children, the wage per person reduces itself to £1 Is.

Some of the families that came out of rack-rented tenements can show rent books recording years of regular and faithful payment of their crushing rent-burden. Have they not earned their "betterment"?

Their financial gain is big, but the factor of environment and moral effect is even bigger. Families of two to seven children havo real homos in the Hutt workers' garden suburb. That could never have happened in their late tenements.

If the financial factor is as two to one in favour of the new order, the moral factor is as four to one. What is happening, at the Hutt is the biggest sociological advance yet achieved in congested Wellington.