SQUATTERS FINED AND ORDERED OUT AT WELLINGTON

Grey River Argus, 24 May 1947, Page 7

SQUATTERS FINED AND ORDERED OUT AT WELLINGTON

WELLINGTON, May 23. Two court actions were brought against the Abel Tasman House squatter.? almost simultaneously this morning. A few minutes after the Magistrate (Mr Thompson) had fined the five husbands £lO each for trespass, Mr Justice Cornish, in chambers, granted the Wellington Ladies’ Christian Association an injunction restraining the squatters from further occupancy of Abel Tasman Blouse, the injunction to lie in the court for 14 days in consideration of the families' assurance that all hoped to find other accommodation within a fortnight. It was stated in the Magistrate’s Court, on behalf of the defendants, that one couple had been living in a converted tool shed and that accumulated misery caused by social and economic circumstances beyond their control forced them to enter the house, which had been empty for some weeks'. It was also stated that there wore 3000 unsatisfied applications for houses in Wellington.

The Magistrate said the Court could not let natural sympathy override the fact that the law had been broken. “The penalty must be a serious one. It needs no stressing by me what effect an extension of this sort of act would have both on the law of the land and the rights of property”.

•In the Supreme Court in chambers; when the motion for an injunction was heard before Mr Justice Cornish it was stated that the Ladies’ Christian Association was waiting vacant possession of the premises to hand the house to the R.S.A., as a hostel for disabled servicemen. In consideration of the difficult position of the squatters, the association suggested that the order lie in the Court for 14 days.

In granting the application, the Judge awarded costs- against all six defendants, the five families still in occupancy to pay £3 3s each, and the other defendant, who left the premises on April 23, £2 2s.

OWNER ALLOWED USE OF HOUSE GISBORNE. May 23. On the ground that the hardship on the owner was greater, Mr Justice Fair in the Supreme Court granted a petition by Bertram Hector Clayton for possession of a flat from his tenant, Arthur Leonard Martin. Clayton, his wife, daughter and two sons have been living in one room and a tent for nine months, for which they have paid £2 a week, and Martin is paying 18s a week for a fiat, which he had been occupying for 11 years. His Honour said there was no reason why defendant and his wife could not live in a single room for six months until they could occupy a transit flat or another house.