HOUSING SCHEMES

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXXII, Issue 22205, 4 September 1935, Page 15

HOUSING SCHEMES

SjLr,—Many o:t us know the advani> ag«s in costs and amenities of houses ovsr flats. Thinkers are beginning to realise that ilats on a large scale ill big cities often, accentuate the evils they seek to check. Flats where the ter.ants have not a yard of ground which they can use as their own are no use in a new and sparsely peopled country like ours. By last mail from Home a social reformer sent me a description of an ambitious scheme for the development of 600 acres bought at a cost of £50,000 by the Aberdeen Town Council for the layout of 5000 houses and all the requirements of a new community. The chief point about . th«i scheme in that while the corporation fosters it, it will be largely private enterprise which will carry it to a nuccessful conclusion. The Board of Health's figures of 20 houses to the acre under the great humanitarian project will, be more than halved to about eight houses per acre. The adoption of the plan will obviate the necessity of building four and five-storey houses in the centre of the city and getting people congregated together in the most crowded form of housing. The clearing areas in the city, it is held, should bo devoted to the development of industrial and eommerCla ' enterprises rather than housing. An important statement was made by Lord Provost Alexander, who drew attention to a very grave danger attendant upon the development of municipal housing schemes. "Socialists," he said, "may rejoice to see local authorities becoming the largest owners cf house property iin the country, but the question is a much wider and deeper °uo than the mere provision of an adequate supply of new houses. Tenants of such housing schemes, having nut a single landlord, and that landlord a public body, more open to mass suggestion than a private individual, Jiave naturally tended to bind themselves not only to secure repress for what at times may be genu--IDe grievanceij, but also to acquire 'pecial privileges. Thus at municipal tactions candidates in areas wher9 iMre are large municipal housing Cllemes may find themselves consented by a «.o] id body of voters, tena j'. s these houses, who want things a ced to them by 1 the municipality, n« who will naturally vote for tho candidates who promise to satisfy their ernands. Iheiie tenants, who, to begin ! : l re P a J'' n g uneconomic rents have to be made up out of thu LI r ratepaj'ers, may thus rat« re ' ur^ er privileges, again at this ratepayers' expense." W. K. Howirr.