AUSTRALIAN HOUSING

Grey River Argus, 4 July 1944, Page 4

AUSTRALIAN HOUSING

Serious Shortage POST-WAR PLANS. (Special to N.Z. Press Assn.) (Rec. a. 5.) SYDNEY, Juiy 3'lhe New Zealand. Government's housing scheme is envied irn Australia, where rhe shortage of homes is causing serious concern. Olticial investigation reveals that nowhere are conditions worse than in Sydney. Here, even in some of the better class localities, hundreds of families are living in over-crowded conditions, often without proper bathroom or washing facilities. Families have been broken up; newly married couples are unable to establish their own homes; children are being born and are growing up in tents and caravans. While housing is a main feature of the Commonwealth's post-war reconstruction plans, the present acute shortage, of labour has permitted only palliative measures. These include, firstly, a scheme for the subdivision of suitable large homes into family flat units; secondly, the Government building of “sleep-out bungalows” for hire to owners of accommodationtaxed homes at a rental of fifteen shillings monthly; thirdly, a scheme to move families from overcrowded cities to country areas in which dwellings are available. In support of its Wider referendum campaign, the Federal Government has issued a series of four pamphlets on housing. These present a case for slum clearance and planned Government home building. Because of Australia s small population and transport problems, the post-war prefabrication of entire houses is not considered economic, but it is suggested that manufacturing costs could oe reduced by erecting, homes in large numbers'and arranging a programme of work, so that bricklayers, carpenters, electricians and plumbers could proceed from job to job in strict oraen. The prohibition of luxury housebuilding after the war is advocated It is suggested that the fixing of a minimum price for post-war dwellings would make no needed economy m building materials, which are certain to be in limited supply. The Commonwealth has also set up an experimental building station., •which will examine problems of producing good and economic houses. New methods of construction to reduce building costs while improving housing standards will be 1 tested, botn in practical building and by laboratory methods. Any new construction methods decided upon will be sufficiently flexible to allow individuality to figure in home planning. .This long-range plan for homebuilding, however, has not satisfied a large section of the Australian public, and it is widely claimed that labour could be diverted to urgently needed domestic building without serious interference with the Commonwealth’s war eifort. Although timber and carpenters are particularly scarce, it is suggested that permanent brick homes might be built, utilising hundreds of bricklayers and plasterers who are now doing labouring jobs—and making use of forty million bricks which are lying idle. Trade officials say that there are twenty thousand brickbuilding operatives in the Australian Army, while an additional ten thousand are employed in food and other industries. The return of eleven thousand odd of these skilled men to home building, it is claimed, would mean that permanent brick homes could be built at the rate of a thousand every six weeks. Meanwhile, with scant expectation of an early improvement in their own housing situation, Australians are anxious that everything possible shall be learned from New Zealand’s housing scheme, which, while it may have .its critics, is envied here because it is certainly building homes.