OVERCROWDING EVIL.

New Zealand Herald, Volume LIX, Issue 18281, 23 December 1922, Page 9

OVERCROWDING EVIL.

CITY'S POOR CHILDREN.

"NOT A FIGHTING CHANCE."

SOCIAL WORKERS' APPEAL.

A reminder to Auckland citizens that behind all the festivities and merry making of Christmas the shadow of poverty and suffering lies heavily over many of the homes of the poor was conveyed by tho Rev. F. R. Jeffreys, in a speech of thanks to the Rotary Club for their entertainment to poor children at the, Town Hall, yesterday.

" You have given great pleasure to tho really poor children of Auckland this afternoon," he said. " You probably have an idea of how little pleasure some of them get, but I think you can hardly understand how poor and wretched some of the homes are from which they have come. When Dr. Truby King was in Auckland solmo of the social workers took him into some of these homes within a stone's throw of the. Town Hall, and he was astounded at the conditions he found prevailing here in the heart of the city. The housing problem in Auckland is getting terribly urgent. Some of tho poor little children you saw here to-day have never had even a fighting chatice. I went to a prize-giving ceremony out in the suburbs the other day, and' tho difference between the healthy, rosy-faced youngsters and those who live herded hero in some of our city homes was most striking." The speaker quoted ono shocking case of overcrowding, personally known to one. social worker, in which no fewer than 25 people were living in a six-roomed house m Newton, for which a rent of £3 a week was paid. In the main part of the house lived a man and his wife and seven -fliildren, and iseven .boarders. Downstairs were, two wretched basement rooms, one occupied by a man and his wife and three children," the other with two children and their parents. For each of theso rooms was paid a rental of a guinea a week plus 3s for gas. There were no proper cooking arrangements in the house, but one big communal pot was always on the boil, into which each batch of tenants dropped their muslin bags of food. In an equally harrowing case, cited by another worker, two married couples, one with 12 children and one with four, lived in a four-roomed cottage. The mother of the latter family, almost distracted with worry, had deserted her husband in order that the. children might be placed in a borne.

" There- is most urgent need for citizens of Auckland to pay more attention to this matter of overcrowding, which is getting worse all the time," concluded Mr. Jeffreys. " The Rotarv Club's motto is ' Service.' If such a thing could be done. I wish your club would appoint a com miftee and go into some of these homes with tho social workers, so that you could see for yourselves the distress which exists. Auckland got to know of these things at the time of the. epidemic, and there was a tremendous outcry, but now that ihe excitement has subsided overcrowding is going on just the same. The Rotary Club could do a lot toward waking Aucklnnders up again to horror at these conditions, to bringing back the. magnificent spirit which beat the epidemic. If you could do this you would help many parents who are fighting against terrible odds, and be doing something which would vastly improve conditions among the poor of the citv."