HOUSING POLICY

Evening Post, Volume CXXIV, Issue 95, 19 October 1937, Page 12

HOUSING POLICY

DIRECTOR'S COMMENT

"ALMOST MILK AND WATER"

"The present housing policy in New Zealand is almost a milk-and-water policy compared with the generous assistance granted in other countries," said Mr. A. Tyndall, Director of Housing Construction, in an address on the work of his Department to the Rotary Club today.

Outlining some of the activities of his Department which, although it was spread all over the country, was not a very big one, because he had tried to utilise private enterprise to the full, Mr. Tyndall said that there were now about 1000 different designs for houses. The Government had said that every house had to be different, and in that it was requiring something that had been done in no other housing scheme in the world. The variety. of design entailed a tremendous amount of work.

Recently, for instance, the Public Works Department had submitted a bill for 34,972 blueprints, and in all about 50,000 blueprints had been made. Land for housing schemes had been purchased in 52 towns, and building contracts had been let in 30 towns. Houses begun up to this week numbered more than 700, and the department was advertising contracts for houses at the rate of 55 houses a week.

The houses being built were not necessarily what were usually described as workers' houses, said Mr. Tyndall. It was true that the Housing Act of 1919, which was the statutory authority foe the existence of the Department, fixed an income limit of £ 300odd a year with certain additional allowances, but the Government had made it clear that that limit would be removed and already the State Advances, in advertising Government houses to let had stated that there was no income limitation. They were not "workers' houses," but homes for the people of New Zealand. WORLD SHORTAGE. All over the civilised world there was a shortage of houses, said Mr. Tyndall, and there were many reasons for it. First, there was what was known as building in the wrong price range, which meant that a greater proportion of one's income had to be devoted to the cost of housing than was economically justifiable. A useful hypothesis wwats t that the capital cost of a man's house should not exceed about twice his annual income. With some incomes, of course; any house at all would cost more than that.

The depression was another cause of the housing shortage, said Mr. Tyndall, as the' building trade was very sensitive to economic changes. Then borer and dry rot took no time off during the depression and there were many houses in New Zealand that had completed their cycle of life and were due for replacement. More marriages and greater income were two otheflr reasons for the present shortage, and there was also the reduced size of the modern family. The desire for people to own their own homes was another contributing factor in the demand for houses, not so much in New Zealand, where the desire had been for years a feature of national life, but in other countries. Moreover there was the tendency for rents to be based not on the constructional value of the house, but on its speculative value, and the fact that slums had to be cleared and new houses provided instead. Mr- Tyndall described shortly some of the efforts made overseas to cope with the housing problem, with particular reference to England, which, he said, led the world.