RENT AND THE LODGER

New Zealand Times, Volume XXXVII, Issue 8441, 29 May 1913, Page 4

RENT AND THE LODGER

THE GREAT HOUSING PROBLEM. ‘ ’Rent and the Lodger.” This was a topic to which Bishop Crossley paid special attention in his. civio sermon at Auckland on Sunday. “I believe that the housing problem is the greatest problem in New Zealand to-day,” said the Bishop. “I am aware of the Government’s efforts in this matter, but so far only the fringe of it has been touched. To my mind every house should stand apart in its own piece of ground, where the little children, too young to go to school, might play; where the mother might hang out the clothes to dry, and wdiere, perhaps, the phantasm of a garden might be made. Then there is the question of rent, I have been consulting one *of the most experienced men in Auckland on labour matters, and he is of opinion that no family should pay in rent each week more than one day’s wage, remembering that there are five and a half days in a working week. But I know that that is quite impossible here to-day. The labouring man who has to pay 15s to 20s a week in rent is driven, in order to make ends meet, to take in the lodger, and the lodger is the moral disaster of this city. Every man should have a home of his own without having to become a lodginghouse keeper. How is it to be done? That is the problem, and in solving it we must be co-partners.”