A MILLION NEW HOUSES

Hawera Star, Volume XLVII, 1 December 1927, Page 7

A MILLION NEW HOUSES

WORK OF NINE YEARS. BUILDING COSTS DOWN. LONDON, Oct. 4. Over a million new muses have been built m itngianu aim n ales since t..e Armistice, saici Sir Ivmgsiey \i oiq i aril ament ary secretary to tne Mnnstrv or Mine®, -speaking m tne aihiinmls.

During the last three years, lie said, upwards of -520,000 iiousos had been umlt. Nearly iLO.Oud house® —anu v_e.se were mainly built for the workers of the country—had been erected without any -subsidy or State aid at all. The million houses had cost, m many cases, rar too much money. The higher the subsidy the higher had been the cost of the houses. At times said Sir Kingsley, a panor house haa cost as much as £I6OO. One of the most hopeful signs of the hour was the reduction in building prices.

Since the ■ announcement of the lowering of the subsidy by an average of £25 there had been a reduction of £56 in the cost of a parlor house, and of £37 in the cost of a non-parlor house.

We needed cheaper houses to-day if we were to do justice to the poorer sections of wage-earners, who could not in many cases pay present day rents. It was largely owing to the beneficient work of the great building societies of the country that, perhaps at no time in our history, did so many wage-earners own their houses. The Government’s business now was to turn more vigorously and effectively to one of the most difficult sides of the housing problem —the clearance of the slums —which had too long waited for effective treatment.