UNHAPPY PLIGHT

New Zealand Herald, Volume 81, Issue 25001, 18 September 1944, Page 4

UNHAPPY PLIGHT

CROWDED FAMILIES NO PROPER HOMES MOTHERS AND CHILDREN The shocking housing conditions in the metropolitan area reflected in the huge correspondence received by the City Council in response to its recent inquiry are producing two effects that are particularly disturbing. One is the serious harm that innumerable babies and their mothers are suffering in the pre-natal and post-birth periods. The other is the bitterness felt by returned servicemen and their wives at their inability to find decent accommodation after sacrificing much for the country. Both matters are causing great concern to the Mayor, Mr J. A. C. Allum, and the chairman, Mr H. P. Burton, and members of the Housing Committee. Every effort is being made to find homes for these people at the earliest opportunity. Only One Room An astonishing number of letters are from young mothers who say that, for the sake of their children's health and their own sanity, they dread the advent of another baby. The reason is obvious. These are the mothers, almost scores of them, who are living with their husbands and two or three children in a single room. Normal household facilities are lacking, and. apart from the street, there is no place where their children may play—no garden, no yard, not »wen another room. These women are despondent and desperate. They speak with irony of the appeals to populate the country when there are not sufficient homes in which the additional population may Jive. They speak with anger of- the rebuffs they have received from owners of apartment houses and flats who have refused to accept them as tenants because of their young children. There are far too many of these distressing stories to suggest that they are merely the products of vivid imaginations. Servicemen's Wives There are fewer letters from servicemen, but there are sufficient to suggest that many i'eel they have returned to conditions far different from those they had been led to expect. Some of the most pathetic letters are from the wives of servicemen who are still overseas. Often without fri°nds or relatives in the locality to assist them, they are waging a lonely battle against illness and discomfort in cramped quarters tor which high rents are charged. Some of these women have three and four children to care for. People who have been sent to employment in Auckland under the direction of the manpower authorities form another section who are suffering from the lack of adequate housing. Some have left comfortable homes in other centres and the necessity of living in the restricted space of apartment house rooms or similar accommodation has come to them as a considerable shock. Conditions Widespread While the appeals for better homes have come largely from the central area of the city, an amazingly large number of the applicants are at present living in suburbs where the standard of housing is considered to be above the average. The City Council's files show that shocking conditions exist not only in Freeman's Bay, Newton. Grey Lvn/i and the older* portions of Ponsonby and Parnell, but they are also to be found in Remuera, Orakei, St. Heliers, Epsom, Mount Eden and Takapuna. A point of special interest is that in many cases the applicants are financially able to pay much higher rents if the accommodation was ayailable.