WORKERS' DWELLINGS.

Oamaru Mail, Volume XXXIX, Issue 10753, 28 April 1911, Page 4

WORKERS' DWELLINGS.

THOUSANDS OF APPLICATIONS. £500,000 REQUIRED. (Lyttelton Times Correspondent.) Wellington, April 27. Over 3000 applications have been received by the Labor Department from working men who desire to take advantage of ihe liberal terms of the new workers' dwellings scheme. The Hon. J.-A, Millar (Minister ■• of Labor), who initiated the experiment, stated to a representative of the Lyttelton Times that applications, had come not only from large centres, where land is ._dear and Tents high, but from small provincial towns from Invereargill right through the Dominion. "We are looking out for good sites, and getting them under offer," he said. "The scheme has met with remarkable general approval, and we will endeavor to spread its benefits as widely as possible. The Labor Department is still getting twenty or thirty letters a day' in connection with the scheme." "There is some misapprehension regarding the conditions. Some of the applicants think that they can build anywhere, but the operations must be grouped, otherwise the oxpense of supervision would become too high. The Labor Department has therefore determined not to proceed in any locality unless arrangements can be made for the construction of at least .six houses in one block." The Minister mentioned that the applications from Wellington alone total 1200; . "When will you commence to provide the houses?" 7;lr Millar was asked. "I hope in the course of a few weeks to make a start in several places," he replied. "The demand is so great that our only trouble will be to get enough money. Parliament voted £15,000 for workers' dwellings on last year's Estimates, but I reckon £500,000 will be nearer the mark next year, and that it will have to be repeated for the next five or six years. The scheme is bound to have a good effect in lowering any excessively high rentals of existing houses, because every worker who gets his home by means of the scheme will leave a house empty."