STATE HOUSING

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXXVII, Issue 23772, 27 September 1940, Page 10

STATE HOUSING

Sir, —I have read with interest the controversy re State housing as a paying proposition. The demand exceeds the supply, which does not speak much for the independent spirit of our fathers, whose one desire was to own a home, not to pay rent all their lives, which the State housing policy means. Bitterness and disappointment has been the lot of many rent-payers, it being in lis to build a garden from a neglected property and. to have the place sold over our heads for a hundred more. There is no security of tenure being a tenant with the State as landlord. You feel one of them, and under a kind of obligation to the Government, when T, for one, am of "the other colour."

Like oil and water, the classes will not mix. and humiliations and indignities is the lot of a family driven by high rents and scarcity of rented homes to live in a flat. You liave to bow down to the owner, who in our case lives on the premises and has her own way of planning a garden—very much so. That we may plan a. garden without being dictated to. live our own private lives, one would welcome a change of heart of our Labour Party, so that we could own a home or have the certain knowledge that all we pay. little bv little, will enable us in 10 years to own a real home. Not of the Same Colour.