Evening Post FRIDAY, SEPTEMBER 26, 1941. HOMES OLD AND NEW: A MUDDLE!

Evening Post, Volume CXXXII, Issue 76, 26 September 1941, Page 4

Evening Post FRIDAY, SEPTEMBER 26, 1941. HOMES OLD AND NEW: A MUDDLE!

Recent discussions on housing, and the possibility of an intensified postwar house-famine, .serve to draw attention to some anomalies in residential distribution. In the cities, or in some parts of cities, families huddle together in one house, while in the country, not so far away, houses lie derelict. Even in the one city, and in parts not far separated, houses are over-occupied while houses are empty. As industrialisation advances up a street, old dwelling-houses-—many of them twostoreyed—pass out of residential use long before they need to do so. Many such old houses, if a reasonable sum had been spent on their maintenance, could have housed a family comfortably, but before their time they become gaunt and desolate through lack of paint, and their exferior repels. Yet the spot adjoins, or is actually part of, a congested area. This process goes on wherever a j quarter becomes undesirable through industrialisation or other cause, and even goes on in high-rental residential quarters. Biggish old homes are bought up by speculators, who let them at high rents as apartment houses, where the tenant in turn rack-rents the lodgers. Both speculator and tenant may wax rich for a period; but the period is limited if none of the money goes back into the p\d house for maintenance. And the clearness of house repairs is either a reason or an excuse for neglect of

maintenance,

If some of these old, once highclass, Wellington homes could speak, they could tell 'a remarkable story of one-time family happiness passing into commercialism and then into decay. As some men move progressively downward through life, so do most homes; and the story of many a city street, its metamorphosis from former family happiness to ;, an open or disguised slum condition, can be read in its drab facades, with old-fashioned bowwindows, and in its dingy interiors. While many of the old homes are taking their first plunge into commercialism, or their final plunge into a useless condition, the housing

congestion goes on, increases, and threatens to be chronic after the war. At a meeting on Wednesday night of the Real Estate Institute of New Zealand one speaker was reported

as saying:

We hear a lot about State houses, but it appears to me that there is no possibility of the general public getting these houses. They will have to be kept for the soldiers. If they're not, I wouldn't like to be in the shoes of the Minister of Housing.

Another speaker is reported to have said that "the building of State houses was doing little to relieve the position, and State building jobs took twice as long to do as when done by a private builder. People had to buy homes of up to 40 or 50 years old, and the prices were fictitious." But there must be wooden homes in Wellington which are of greater age than that, and which, by good maintenance, remain satisfactory, while others of less age have gone utterly to disrepair* In localities where both classes of old home are found* the result is distinctly unfair to the better. In a time of congestion the price paid is little guide,/for it turns on more factors than the house

itself.

Slum clearance was the note sounded by a third speaker, who is reported as saying:

In Wellington—and it was no good going round like an ostrich—there were places which would be better pulled down, and the time was not far distant when owners of such properties would be compelled to keep them in better condition.

The speaker refers; probably, to a time coming, a period of greater stability of building and repair costs. If compulsion were applied now to owners, where would they find both materials and workmen at reasonable charges? Jf action had been taken years ago in the way of slumpfevention, slum-clearance would not present the bill it presents today. The Government's house-building system has handicapped the private builder, has limited the output of houses, and has failed either to anticipate or to prevent the increase of costs. The Government's house* building system operates in an anomalous state of affairs for which it provides no cure, nor will private, enterprise provide 1 a cure while other disabilities remain. Anyone who fails to see the melancholy evidence of failure, in scores of streets, would have to be an ostrich indeed. And yet, as the quoted speakers point out, the return of peace will increase the congestion, and the bottle-neck into which home-seekers are crowding will almost inevitably narrow, and may even close. Neither in conservation of existing material, nor in the provision of new material, nor in the practice of town-planning (which is mostly a mere gesture) has the home-seeker's need been anticipated, and both the home-seeker and the coxoxmtmix must tkfireksr snfffM? ,