Housing Loans For Ex-Servicemen

Northern Advocate, 29 July 1949, Page 4

Housing Loans For Ex-Servicemen

WELLINGTON, Thu. (P.A.) —Less delay in payments to builders and contractors for houses built under rehabilitation loans is to be sought by the 2nd NZEF Association. The association’s annual conference today approved a remit that the Minister of Rehabilitation be asked to eliminate long delays in payments in areas where there is no pay-out office. The conference also urged that a full rehabilitation housing loan should be available to all ex-servicemen, irrespective of their financial state, and that any ex-serviceman who repaid his furniture loan should be allowed a further £IOO free of interest. “If a returned soldier has a ‘few bob’ of his own, the department will advance only so much and the man has to produce the rest himself,” said a delegate. “I think if a man is entitled to any rehabilitation at all he should get the lot.”

PACIFIC SERVICE

“There has been a lot of discrimination against men with service in the Pacific where rehabilitation is concerned,” said Mr L. L. Dornbush (Opotiki).

The conference approved a remit from Feilding that rehabilitation assistance should be available immediately to all ex-servicemen with overseas service, irrespective of the length of service or area in which they were.

Speakers said men with less than six months in forward areas or 12 months elsewhere overseas, were at present being penalised. Others with very low grading were waiting indefinitely for assistance and would be glad of some indication of when they were likely to get it.