GREYMOUTH HOUSING

Greymouth Evening Star, 10 December 1945, Page 2

GREYMOUTH HOUSING

_ [TO THE EDITOR.I ■ - Sir, —When raising the question o£ clearing away some of Greymouth’s discreditable slum dwellings I fully realised the subject would be unpopular with those property-owners who draw rents from the unfortunate people who occupy them'. “Raised a Family” is evidently one of those who has an interest in slum property. Let me inform your correspondent that in the Progress League’l. represent the West Coast Trades Council, which in turn represents several hundred workers living in Greymouth. I speak for these people—not myself alone—and I take my instructions from them. When they tell me to drop the proposition I raised at the meeting of the Progress League I shall do so—and not before. The fact I have resided in the town for a mere six years has no bearing on the question. The proposition I put forward for building decent houses for purchase by the present occupants of slum dwellings will cost the ratepayers nothing. The scheme can be entirely self-supporting. I have much more yet to say about the sluming shacks of Greymouth, and : the effect they have upon the health of the children reared in them. “Raised a Family” and others of his kind can snivel about it as much as they like. I have no fault to find with the owners of aged dwellings who honestly endeavour to make .their tenants as comfortable as is possbile under the circumstances. But those landlords are to be condemned who deliberately trade upon the present housing shortage by refusing to carry out even the most modest repairs to their properties to keep them reasonably habitable for the families who have no choice but to live in them. And this applies whether they be prolific old pioneers or not. Yours, et r T. PRATT.