The Evening Star. FRIDAY, NOVEMBER 26, 1937. THE HOUSING PROBLEM.

Evening Star, Issue 22816, 26 November 1937, Page 10

The Evening Star. FRIDAY, NOVEMBER 26, 1937. THE HOUSING PROBLEM.

Housing presents the most difficult social problem o,f the day. Overcrowding and oversharing are common. The Government, in an effort to relieve the position, has taken the matter in hand, and a State building programme, supplemented by a measure of municipal co-operation in Dunedin, has been put in operation. Seeing that there is a definite shortage of houses, it would have been supposed that Ministers, realising that it must be a long time before their plans will meet the pressing needs, would have done their best to encourage private enterprise to build houses for letting purposes. That, however, does not accord with Labour ideas, which in the main desire to subordinate individual effort to State action. It is an unfortunate trend, but it is a symptom of the times. This development is emphasised in a new clause in the Finance Bill, which has passed the House of Representatives. The essence of this clause is that landlords who require their tenants to quit rented houses will have to make special arrangements for the provision of alternative accommodation for them. The onus is no longer on the individual in such cases to get a house for himself. Instead the owner of the house ho is occupying must take the responsibility. This is a reversal of the accepted order of things. The object of the now provision, as is the case with other innovations of the Government, is good, but the practical issues have been disregarded and the measure is likely to defeat itself. The effect will bo that hardships may be remedied for one class only at the expense of aifuther section of the community. In the Fair Rents Act it was provided that an order for recovery of possession of a house might bo made on certain grounds. Some of these

still stand, while others are deleted. An order may be made if a tenant fails to pay rent, has been guilty of conduct that is a nuisance or annoyance to his neighbours, or has sublet a dwelling house or any part thereof by which he is making a profit that is unreasonable. Among the provisions that no longer apply is one making the ground for an order the failure of a tenant to take reasonable care of a house. Another of at least equal importance - was the declaration of the owner that the premises were reasonably required for his own occupation as a dwelling house. That has gone by the board, and whore it was comparatively easy for a person under the Act to gain possession of his house for legitimate reasons the new clause makes it extremely difficult. He must either find alternative accommodation, or else satisfy a magistrate that he is faced with more hardships than tlio tenant. The danse do.es not apply to newer houses, but that presumably is to encourage people to build. That is no guarantee, however, for the date might lie moved forward at any time. Destruction of the sanctity of contracts is also involved, because if a house is let on a weekly or monthly tenancy the tenancy may have to be permanent. The tenant is put virtually in the same position as a purchaser without paying any purchase money. One effect will probably bo to put up the prices for the sale of vacant houses, for it is evident that houses for letting will become more difficult to find than they are at present. It would appear that in future the letting of houses will have to be clone by the Government, which does not build to provide rents suitable for the poorest people. It is building to make good a deficiency, and when, or before, its programme is completed it hopes to destroy thousands of inferior homes, so that the deficiency will-still remain. It is safe to assume that houses constructed by private enterprise in future will be built almost entirely for sale and will probably lie untenanted until a sale is effected. Instead of the Government solving the' housing problem, according to its declared intention, it is going to accentuate the difficulties under the new regulation which will make the building of houses for letting purposes a most unattractive and risky proposition.