CORPORATION HOUSING SCHEME.

Evening Star, Issue 17279, 18 February 1920, Page 3

CORPORATION HOUSING SCHEME.

TO THE EDITOR. Sir,—The details you publish to-night are months too late for any practical purpose. The City is committed, for good or ul, to the project. Adverse criticism should have been made with a view to preventing a blunder, if it is one. It workers won’t take them, perhaps others who are retired and don’t require to travel daily will move out, and the houses vacated will bo available for workers. There is no doubt your criticism is well founded. A more unsuitable project for the settlement of workers could not have been conceived. Will you, or the Mayor through your columns, explain why, in considering the question of workers’ homes, the Wingatui site belonging to the council was overlooked. It gets 50 per cent, more sunshine than Dunedin; the land has the City’s electric light around it; water and drainage are both .available at file minimum of cost. The journey is 22 minutes by rail from Dunedin, and the fare 2s per week, which is better than any tram system. By increased settlement and a little pressure on the Railway Department, through trains could servo this land by a 12-minute journey from Dunedin. The area is about 200 acres, and it is let at grazing rentals, averaging 50s per acre. Land immediately adjoining was sold at auction two months ago by Jno. Reid and Sons on account of a client at £lO5 to £lll per acre. Money is always worth 5 per cent., so that it cannot be good business for the City to continue to let lands at this figure that would fetch over £IOO per acre. Better to sell and invest the money. If roaded, this land would make an ideal garden city, and would provide for 600 houses, which is something more suitable for the present scarcity. If put up to auction on liberal terms, such as 10 per cent, on the fall of the hammer and 5 to 10 pel’ cent, per annum until paid off, it would, I believe, average out at £l5O per acre, or something less tlian £4O per quarter-acre. Ferro-con-crete houses could be built there for £2OO less than at Maori Hill, and the same conveniences are available. The City Council could get the necessary capital to advance for building houses under the Government Act of last session. Much has appeared in the Press about the new world and new conditions we were entering after the war,; but the same small-minded ideas are everywhere in evidence in the treatment of ©very question that comes up for consideration.—l am, etc., Worker. February 17.