NO ROOM TO SPARE

Evening Post, Volume CXXV, Issue 83, 8 April 1938, Page 10

NO ROOM TO SPARE

HOUSING IN CITY

Wellington has no room to spare. In his report to the City Council last night on the results of the housing survey the City Engineer (Mr. K. E. Luke) said that only 128 private dwellings were found unoccupied, and that number included several houses nearing completion and 29 Government houses at Miramar just completed but not then occupied. There were also eight houses which were unsatisfactory, but which could be repaired, and sixteen unoccupied and not fit for renovation. Only five apartment-houses were unoccupied, two of which were modern flats just completed when the inspectors visited them; two were dwellinghouses in course of conversion into flats,- and one was a house changing ownership. Of the 43 satisfactory "apartment units" unoccupied the majority were in new tenement buildings. The survey showed that there were only 59 unoccupied but unsatisfactory apartment units, many of which were not fit for human habitation. There were no vacant boarding-

houses. , . "In the whole of the city and suburbs," said Mr. Luke, "there were only 254 residential units (dwellings and apartments) vacant, made up of 171 satisfactory and 83 unsatisfactory units. This small number of vacant residential buildings and apartments units discloses a serious-shortage _ of housing accommodation in the city."