SYDNEY'S EXPANSION.

Northern Advocate, 26 July 1923, Page 3

SYDNEY'S EXPANSION.

WORKERS SQUEEZED OUT

ACUTE HOUSING SHORTAGE

Workaday Sydney is .being squeezed out of the city area; and residential areas are fast disappearing, so as to make room for tall factories and their abominable smoke nuisance.

The house shortage in Sydney was never more acute than it is now.

Sydney is growing by leaps and bounds, and the clearest evidence of the fact is the daily refugees to the army of the homeless.

Within the past few years Pyrmont has lost more than half its population owing to this transition in building, ,It is believed that when leaseholds in j the Harris Estate expire within the next few years, practically the whole of Pyrmont, with its valuable lands near the water fronts of Darling Harbour, will have been transformed into wool and skin warehouses, factories, and business premises. "Wipe out the slums," is the psrennial cry of reformers. A deputation with this motto as its battle-cry let the present Lord Mayor know that the anti-slum' movement is far from being dead.

But the slums are surely, though slowly, being removed by the overincreasing demand for factory sites. Even the placid surroundings of Darlinghurst, Surry Hills, Woolloomooloo, and the Rocks {ye being disturbed by the city's expansive movement.

The Lord Mayor said that he recognised the great difficulties which faced homeless Sydney.

It was ,-because of the dearth of homes close .to the city for workers whose business required that they should live close, by, that lie had submitted his schemes for the housing of 180 families at reasonable rentals on the double-tenement 3ystem.

These schmes provided for an expenditure of about £150,000, and if they barely paid interest and little towards the sinking fund they would meet an urgent public need.

Several builders and contractors ascribed a shortage of houses to the scarcity of bricklayers, stonemasons and carpenters and joiners.

Trades Hall officials just as strenuously denied that there was a shortage of skilled labour. 1

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