CREATION OF SLUMS

New Zealand Times, Volume L, Issue 11653, 18 October 1923, Page 3

CREATION OF SLUMS

DECAYED HOUSES IN CITY. At a meeting of the Health Week executors last evening, a report was submitted relative to tiie number of unfit habitations in the city. The report stated that the total number of demolition and closing orders authorised by the council and served during the last 12 months was SOI, and from what could, be gathered that total \tould be very much increased were the health officers able to convince the magistrates that the de-housed residents would be able to find other accommodation. Houses were being altered to admit two or more families living in a building which was originally designed for one family only. The opinion of a Toronto medical officer that the so-called cheap house, containing several flats, if not built according to ail the rules of modern art, from the point of view of hygiene, and if not constantly inspected, tended to become rapidly a centre of plij'sical and moral unhealthiness, and degenerated into a veritable slum, could not be overlooked, in view of the present growing semi-tenement house wave. “It i« the ideal in New Zealand that each family shall occupy a house situated in its . own grounds. Terraces, tenement houses, and flats are not in favour with the general body of residents, and are not necessary at this period of the city’s deevlopment."