BUILDING HOMES

Evening Post, Volume CXXXI, Issue 102, 2 May 1941, Page 8

BUILDING HOMES

THE COUNCIL SCHEME

A VALUABLE CONTRIBUTION

REPLY TO MR. McKEEN

The City Council's housing scheme was a valuable contribution to the endeavour made to overcome the chronic housing shortage in Wellington, said Messrs. M. Fraser and R. L. Macalisiter, Citizens candidates for re-election to the City Council, who were mainly responsible for drawing up the scheme, replying to the criticism made by Mr. R. McKeen, Labour candidate for the j Mayoralty. It approached the problem differently from the State housing scheme in that it encouraged home ownership, instead of rent paying which left the tenant at the end of his life no further ahead. The Wellington scheme was patterned upon home building in Great Britain, where both he and Mr. Macalister had made first-hand investigations, said Mr. Fraser. It was no experiment; success and popularity were proved in England. Too often State tenants were not those in greatest need of assistance, and the houses were rental houses, not owners' homes. Second mortgages went out in the last depression and it was to bridge the gap so left that the council's scheme was drawn up, said Mr. Fraser In short, if the intending builder could find 10 per cent, of the cost of land and building, the council, working in collaboration with financial institu« tions, guaranteed the 90 per cent, balance, and the owner built where he liked and to the design he liked, and to the depth of his pocket. v There was as much as two years' delay in getting a State house; there was none in the council scheme. ONLY REALLY UNDER WAY. It was true that only 57 houses were so far built under the scheme, but ii was only in the last year that it was really under way. Those houses would have cost, had the council set up a department (which would-have snow* balled in cost), about £80,000. The best builder for the small home owner was unquestionably the small man. Mr. McKeen had said that 37s a week —the outgoing on a £1350 home under the council scheme—was four or five shillings higher than the rental for a comparable State house. True enough, but at the end of 25 years the owner owned his home, but the State tenani was where he started. "It is not the size of a man's income which counts, so much as what a man does with it," said Mr. Fraser. "This scheme makes it possible or the council to help the man who will help himself." i If the financial institutions would not support and co-operate in ths scheme, he concluded, other means would be found to ensure finance to carry it ahead. ' PROBLEM WILL BE MORE PRESSING. . Serious as the housing position was jat present, said Mr. Macalister. it would -become still more pressing aftsr the war when thousands of men returned. The council's scheme we 3 j based upon the success of scores cf .local body schemes in: Britain under | which hundreds of thousands of ho:iie3 ihad been built on the bases of cooperation with private enterprise and home owning, not home letting. House building by the corporation, in place of home building by ■th-j owner, would mean that in bad timea rents would not be paid and the de- ! ficit would fall upon the ratepayers. Strange it was. said Mr. Macalister, j that though Labour councillors had J opposed the scheme if had ■ had ■ the support of the Labour Government. Auckland today, he believed, was investigating the Wellington plan and would prubably soon approach ths I Government for similar powers. . | "It is chargsd against the schema i that only 57 homes have been built." he continued, "but my recollection-.is that in the first year the State Housing Department built only 22 houses, though thousands have been built since. The city scheme, too, will grew.1' He suggested that really the Labour candidates had not much fault to fcna. It was not perfect, but it was a valuable contribution, and an immense assistance to people who wanted to own. homes,, not rent houses. He would like to see taken into the city areas adjacent where land was cheaper and less difficult as building land. THEIR OWN HOMES. "You don't make good citizens if you make them permanent rentpayers, and you don't have slums where people jown their homes," said Mr. M. F. Luckie. "Moreover, the easiest and the best of all compulsory savings is for a man and his family to live in a home that is their own." '*"■ I The City Council's co-operation with j the State Housing Department, apart from its encouragement of home building, was real, said Mr. W. Appleton. It h.3d made available at. an extremely low cost at Homebush 119 sections and at Northland 87 sections for State j houses. He recalled Mr. C. H. Chap- ■ man's warning in 1936 that the counicil should beware of difficulties and •evils in house letting and his advocacy jof co-operati6n, not competition, with the Government. Where did he stand on that point today?