STATE HOUSING PROGRAMME

Otago Daily Times, Issue 24637, 19 June 1941, Page 8

STATE HOUSING PROGRAMME

DELAY LESS THAN EXPECTED Construction of State houses has not been held up to the extent expected by a shortage of materials, according to tlie Minister in charge of the Housing Department, Mr H. T. Armstrong, who said in an interview at Christchurch that the housing programme was at present very, little behind the programme laid down. “ The worst trouble is in Auckland, particularly with electrical gear,” the Minister said. “There are quite a few houses there that are completed but not connected up because of the lack of some essential piece, of equipment.” The department was now very nearly independent of imported materials, said the Minister, not more than 10 per cent, used in the State houses being from outside New Zealand. Another cause of the slight slowing up of the programme was that not enough men were available for the construction work.

“We have fewer men, but they are more skilled,” said the Minister, “and therefore the programme is not as far behind as we anticipated it would be. We are not slipping much.”, Mr Armstrong said that there had been some newspaper criticism of the loss of £2OOO shown in the accounts of the Housing Department last year, but with the undertaking in the stage it was then, a loss of £2OOO was insignificant. “There won’t be any £2OOO loss this year,” he said. Rents were coming in exceptionally well. “We are proud of most of our tenants and the way they look after their houses,” said Mr Armstrong. “ There are not many bad payers among the tenants. Of corrse, there is a proportion who have an almost religious objection against paying rent, but they crop up with every landlord. There are also a few who, through outside circumstances, are unable to pay, but the number of defaulters is very small.”