SLUM AREAS.

Evening Post, Volume CXXVI, Issue 7, 8 July 1938, Page 9

SLUM AREAS.

NO IMPROVEMENT

GOVERNMENT BLAMED

PROMISES NOT KEPT

Shocking slum conditions that existed in Auckland twenty years ago still exist today, declared the Hon. T. Bloodworth (Auckland) in the Legislative Council yesterday afternoon. They still existed because private enterprise had failed, he added, and because both the last Government and the present Government had failed to keep promises made to give city councils power to deal with such areas.

After quoting figures to show that there was a great shortage of houses in Wellington, Mr. Bloodworth said that housing conditions were just as bad in Auckland as in the Capital. The reason for the conditions disclosed by the housing surveys was the failure of private enterprise to cope with housing and the inability of local bodies to take action.

During the influenza epidemic twenty years ago he had become acquainted with the appalling slum conditions in some parts of Auckland and had sought a place on the Auckland City Council to remedy what he had discovered. He had been a member of the council until the last election and, in spite of all the argument he had put forward, he had to admit that he had been a failure as a councillor because the slums that existed twenty years ago were still standing and were still occupied. "Why do those slums still stand and why are people still compelled to live in them?" he asked. "It is because the City Council did not have sufficient power to deal with the position." PROMISES MADE. The last Government and the present Government had promised to give that power to the municipalities, Mr. Bloodworth said, but neither had done it. The Government would not give sufficient attention to municipal law to enable the councils to deal with I decadent areas and secure better conditions for the citizens.

"What better could we do to celebrate our centenary than be able to say of New Zealand as the Swedes can say of Sweden: 'This is a land without slums,'" he said. When more houses were suggested, the excuse was made that there was a shortage of labour. That was true, but a greater shortage was being induped by the building of exhibition pavilions. The slum dwellers of 1941, if they could afford the tram fare, would be able to go and look at those buildings which were to be erected when houses were a more urgent necessity.

The Housing Department reported that it had built 2700 houses, but at the same time Wellington was short of over 7000 homes. Under the present system they would never catch up with the housing shortage. No matter how many houses were built there would never be a glut of homes, because if all housing demands were supplied within- a year building would still have to go on to replace obsolescent dwellings.