DRIFT FROM THE COUNTRY

Hauraki Plains Gazette, Volume 52, Issue 32311, 10 September 1943, Page 5

DRIFT FROM THE COUNTRY

(To the Editor.)

,Sir, —A survey of housing conditions in 1936 showed much more overcrowding in rural areas than in the towns. The total figures were accepted as proof of necessity for a city housing scheme and the State Housing Department of the Advances Corporation was set up, many more thousands of houses have been built, carpenters imported from Australia, with the consequence that houses are now harder than ever to obtain.

Even though this is a voice crying in the wilderness, the facts concern-, ing necessity for a housing programme should' be placed on record. It cannot be denied that people ' are waiting for houses in the towns. Whence came these people? They have not suddenly come into existence, they have not come from overseas. Both political parties, perhaps all parties, put housing in the forefront of their proposals. Against the men employed in building there are many others needed to feed l , clothe, transport, supply materials for, and keep the builders amused. This host, reminding one of the St. Ives conundrum, requires housing and creates a housing problem that New Zealand could do without while there is a war on and so many men have left the country. Farming supplies half the products used in New Zealand and the raw materials that are half the manufactures. Better wages in town have denuded productive industry even more than army requirements have done, for this “Housing problem” preceded the war.

No politician has told the truth about housing, yet none need go far to find it. Every census since 1886 has shown a very much greater percentage increase in private dwellings than in population, except the 1921 census, ■when the population percentage increase slightly exceeded the percentage increase in dwellings. There was a special survey after the Labour Party came into power. This was the excuse for a huge city building programme. The survey disclosed that there were 50,698 occupied dwellings in Auckland of which 277 were overcrowded (over 5 persons to 3 rooms or 7i to 4 rooms, etc.) and that there, were 572 unoccupied houses. Wellington had 34,304 occupied houses, 249 overcrowded and 276 unoccupied. Christchurch had 32,290 houses, 146 overcrowded and 565 unoccupied. Dunedin, 19,597, with 84 overcrowded and 247 houses to accommodate the surplus. Hamilton was the only town that reached one per cent, “overcrowded” houses. The extent of urban overcrowding was one house in 165> the average of unoccupied dwellings being one to every 81 houses. There has been no furore over rural housing conditions, though there were less than half as many rural dwellings than urban dwellings and 2289 overcrowded rural dwellings against 1431 overcrowded in all the towns in New Zealand. On the other hand there were 3700 unoccupied dwellings in the country against 2894 in the towns. These figures, with some knowledge of where the unoccupied dwellings are situated, should have given our statesmen the key to the problem, of housing. Unfortunately, the key they want is that of the ballot box. If they could be induced to use the other key that Solomon referred to when he said, —First make it fit for thee in the field, and afterward build thine house, it would forestall many new problems that ultimate cessation of building will create. An unoccupied rural house is too often the sign of a broken heart and abandoned farm that could both have been avoided to the national advantage, at must less than the cost of the average town house, besides saving some of the overcrowding.—l am, etc.,

A. E. ROBINSON. Auckland, September 3.