WHO THOUGHT OF IT FIRST?

Evening Post, Volume CXXVI, Issue 73, 23 September 1938, Page 6

WHO THOUGHT OF IT FIRST?

One would think that the Labour Party were the only people who ever thought of house building, remarked Mr. W. Appleton, the National candidate for Wellington Central, at the Oddfellows' Hall last evening, but in fact the State had been assisting house builders for many years, though, under previous Governments, by the encouragement of private enterprise. It was Richard Seddon who^ introduced the State Advances Department, and between 1923 and 1933, inclusive, 39,291 loans were made for homes built by private enterprise; there was no need for the State to go into the housing business. In those eleven years the number of houses financed under the State Advances scheme was about 300 a month, apart altogether from the thousands of homes built on other finance. The Socialist Government's housing scheme, he maintained, had been a fiasco; it had not produced the results promised and it had not allowed for the houses to become the property of the workers. The National Party's scheme would result in a cooperative effort between the State, private builders, and the workers. Blocks of State houses assumed an institutional appearance, which was highly undesirable and would result in each block becoming, in a few years' time, a slum area. It was well known that a house owner kept his property in far better order than did the average tenant.