UNAVAILING SEARCH

Evening Post, Volume CXX, Issue 8, 9 July 1935, Page 10

UNAVAILING SEARCH

QUARTERS IN HOSPITAL

CAMP SCHEME PROPOSED

If proof were needed that there is in. Wellington a serious and chronic shortage of housing accommodation it is given by the fact that the officers of the Wellington Hospital Board have not yet been able to find accommodation for the mother and six children who were, about a' fortnight ago, found to be living in deplorable conditions in Taranaki Street, the mother and four of her children sleeping in a dingy shed measuring about seven feet square. Since they were removed from those surroundings they have been given temporary quarters in one of the at present disused isolation wards at the hospital itself. If, with the assistance which the hospital authorities are able to afford and with the publicity which the case was given, the mother is unable to obtain accommodation fit to live in and at a rent which is within the bounds of possibility, the unfortunate and miserable position of people in poor circumstances looking for homes, without such assistance, is plain. ! "The two social welfare visitors and I have been looking for a suitable house, but there is still none available," said the-Medical Superintendent, Dr. A. R. Thome. ''Several that were visited were found to be unhealthy." Dr. Thome, commenting upon the strain on the board's funds caused by the necessity of assisting families living in unsuitable homes, such as paying a portion of the rent when a better home was found, said that the position in Wellington was plainly so serious that means of alleviation must be found. The board's social , welfare department had been concerned with only a proportion of families in such conditions, but if some temporary municipal housing scheme were instituted it would greatly relieve the position. TO MEET IMMEDIATE NEEDS. Dr. Thorne mentioned .the temporary provision which had been made in Melbourne during the progress of major works along the Murray River. There the Government had established camps at the main working points, with community kitchens and other facilities for common use and had provided quite comfortable temporary accommodation. If that could be dons there, he thought,- something of the same kind could be done here to relieve a position that was undoubtedly serious. He suggested that suitable shelters could be rapidly and cheaply erected to a design which would make for healthy conditions and comfort from a practical point of view, with food supplied from a central kitchen. Were such a • scheme undertaken on perhaps a three-year plan a programme of permanent housing could be carried out and old and unhealthy houses torn down. The reporter remarked that though in the case of accommodation for workers engaged on a work which would definitely come to a conclusion temporary camps would serve their purpose and then be closed, there would perhaps be a danger that shelters for the temporary relief of a housing shortage would become permanent. "Possibly there is that danger," said Dr. Thorne, "but could they become more permanent than the shacks and hovels in which people have'been living in bad conditions in Wellington for years?" Dr. Thorne said that though the board had given assistance to many families, this was the first time it had taken the emergency step' of finding accommodation on its own property. Although the six children had not previously seemed to be actually underfed, he said, their health showed an improvement under the new conditions. The removal had been the greatest relief to the mother, who had become generally debilitated by the anxiety and hopelessness-of^her position, and the mother's responsibility was being greatly lightened in the temporary premises by not having to cook meals, which were sent to her from the hospital kitchen. ' The board's social welfare officer, Mr. W J Lowe, summed up the difficulties of those who sought homes with little to spare for rent: "A man should be ashamed to'ask for any rent at all for some of the homes I have seen m Wellington." *