SUBURBAN KENNELS. And a Dominant Council.

Free Lance, Volume VIII, Issue 368, 20 July 1907, Page 6

SUBURBAN KENNELS. And a Dominant Council.

THE City Council has been busy with the bye-laws lately. It is, of couinse, going to have the most perfect city under the Southern Cross, and all that sort of thing. We have often wondered if there are any bye-Jaws at all governing the city souith of Te Aro, or, indeed!, in any suburban locality. In the suburbs ait the present time buildang is still proceeding with great briskness. How bu'iki)ers get permission to build some of the lamentable dog-boxes that are at thus moment crying out to be swept off the face of the earth is beyond belief. w • r The worst kind of jerry-builder selects for preference a hole in the earth. Holes in the earth are cheaper than level ground l or rises. On this, with the cheapest material, usually iumu sap, he constructs two or three pitiable cottages on a apace where only one should go. He makes no ingress or egress. The tenants plough through the mud 1 to get to them, and plough back. One tenant pays more for the 1 privilege of living in a suburban dog-kennel in Wellington than three tenants would pay to live in better housesi in any other city in New Zealand. • • * The dividing walls between "double" houses are a sheer absurdity. A one-brick wall is a farce, and shouldn't be allowed. The building bye-law provides for spaces between weather-board houses, but the Council apparently believes that a one-brock wall between two kennels is as good a. protection against tihe spread of fire as an eight-feet clear space betweten. Shops are going up m tihe suburbs, and', ye gods, what shops they are! Alii the cheapness and na&tiness of the dog-kennel d/welling is here emphasised and the danger noreased by always having them two-storied. • • • Spaces between suburban houses and shops are too nairrow. A seflf-respect-mg architect or engineer would oondlemn hundreds of new houses m the suburbs as 111-bualt, unsanitary and dangerous. The City Council makes no sign. It peimits the most flagrant breaches of the bye-laws in the suburbs and sues a city man for leaving a cue on the footpath. There is no doubt that the suburbs of Wellington are tlh« builders' paradise. He puts his nastiest, cheapest work into the suburbs, and l , because of the prohibitive rentta in the city — much higher than tih© ients chaiged witihim a penny ride of t!be heart of London — the worfcer must go out to the suburbs an'dl live in a kennel. *> • « The City Council has in its hands thei power to make tlhe building of slums a peril to jerry-builders. The least observant member of the Oouncil must endorse everything here said if he takes a suburban tram ride. And' if he happens' to get off tlhe oar and spend 1 a day in one of the dbgboxes with fhe carpenters he will learn methods of maMng houses that he never hitherto dreamed of.