CONFIDENCE GONE

Evening Post, Volume CXXV, Issue 100, 30 April 1938, Page 7

CONFIDENCE GONE

ROOT OF HOUSING PROBLEM

A representative of the Labour Party was reported as saying that private enterprise had failed, thus causing the Government to establish a Housing Department, said Mr. M. G. C. McCaul, a Citizens' candidate for the council, speaking at Wadestown. He added that money spent by the council on housing would be a giltedged investment. Those statements were simply not true. Private enterprise did not fail. It was torpedoed by legislation which had not only failed to improve the position, but had made it worse.

Thirty or forty years ago there were alternate shortages and surpluses of houses, and the same law applied to everything else. There was never a permanent shortage until the war and the war legislation intervened. Restrictions on landlords were then imposed, and successive Governments had increased restrictions till now the landlord was by no means sure that he. had any substantial rights over his own property.

"If the tenant had benefited as was hoped by the sponsors of the legislation, Wellington today would be a city of satisfied tenants," said Mr. McCaul. "But it is not. The housing position in Wellington today is worse than at any time, as has been disclosed by the recent housing survey. There is an ..actual shortage of 7206 satisfactory dwelling units and there are 3463 unsatisfactory dwelling units which could be made satisfactory, but we all know that many landlords are afraid to spend money because they are not sure of their rents."

It was absurd for representatives of Labour to claim that house property was a gilt-edged investment today, because it was not. Why did not the Labour Party borrow money and build houses for letting? The confidence which was formerly placed in house property as an investment was gone, and. no man today could die in peace in the knowledge that his wife and children were sure of an income from the rents of cottages he owned. That was the root cause of the permanent housing shortage that was steadily growing more serious. The old-time small landlord had been torpedoed out of the business by legislation. The housing report stated that Wellington required 643 new houses per annum between 1920 and 1936 to provide for the increase of population and demolition of buildings too old for use. It was not possible for State or municipal housing schemes to supply anything near .such a demand. The British Government had the same sad experience. Alter the war Government and municipalities rushed into housing schemes, and everybody else stopped, with the result that the position grew worse instead of better. Later, the British Government confined its activities to financial help and encouragement in the form of guarantees with proper safeguards, and the result was the greatest building boom in the history of the country. "I wonder whether we would have the courage to sweep away such of our present legislation as is necessary to ensure that investment in house property shall again become a giltedged security and attractive to the small investor whose chief thought is security for his old age and for his dependants," said Mr. McCaul. Then, with the aid of >the building societies helped by Government as is done m Britain, and then only, will our housing problem be solved. I am sure ot that because it is plain ordinary common sense."