STATE HOUSING COSTS

Southland Times, Issue 23309, 20 September 1937, Page 4

STATE HOUSING COSTS

PRICES CONSIDERED EXCESSIVE EFFECT ON BUILDING IN INVERCARGILL (From Our Parliamentary Reporter) WELLINGTON, September 17. In his speech in the Address-in-Reply debate in the House of Representatives Mr James Hargest (Nat., Awarua) criticized what he termed the high cost of the Government’s housing scheme and declared that there was much less building activity in Invercargill than before the present. Government took office.

“The housing scheme may be all right if the houses can be built at a reasonable sum, so that they can be rented at reasonable rates without calling on the Consolidated Fund for a subsidy,” said Mr Hargest. “The Leader of the Opposition (the Hon. Adam Hamilton) made a very good point in which he showed that this year, 3325 dwellings have been erected, including those erected by the Government department. During the year ended March 1936, which was three-quarters Coalition and onequarter Labour, 4140 houses were erected. In 1926 7179 were erected and that was at a time which was about as prosperous as today, ‘ and still the Labour Party thinks that it has done something extraordinary in this housing problem, but it knows that, less houses are being built today than would have been built if private enterprise had been left alone, and private enterprise would have erected houses better and cheaper.” Mr Hargest said he was a member of an education board that was repeatedly calling tenders for the erection of houses, and where the Under-Secretary for Housing was getting tenders at up to 24/- a square foot, the board was able to get tenders from between 14/10 and 16/- a square foot. For a house with 1800 to 2000 square feet in it, the difference of 7/6 a square foot was very extraordinary and it showed that there was something wrong somewhere. If anyone doubted his statement he could obtain the plans of some houses ana show that 14/10 and 15/- a square foot were the prices of two houses built for a company in Southland by a good architect and he believed they were very good houses indeed. That was the comparison in prices.

fewer new houses “I see that the honourable member for Invercargill is in his seat and he has been talking a good deal about the 20 houses that are being erected there. I have here a statement of the houses built in 32 months in Invercargill. We have there a building society, supposed to be the best in New Zealand, which has during its lifetime lent out between £4,000,000 and £5,000,000 and has largely built Invercargill. During the sh£i P ; when it had £1,400,000 on loan it total losses were only . £l2OO There were fewer houses built in June of this year than any of those 32 months. Last year new houses to the value of £145,000 odd were built m Invercargill, an average a month of £13,212. The average for 1935 was £ll,OOO odd, and for the eight months of this year the average has been £7660, or a reduction of nearly 50 per cent. Why is that? A member: Weather conditions. Mr Hargest: No, the contracts were not given. People are not building. They are waiting. If the Minister will go to Invercargill, contractors will tell him that they are anxious to tender for houses, but people are not building. A member: How many carpenters are there unemployed in Invercargill today? Mr Hargest: I do not know.

A member: None. Mr Hargest: “If there are none with an average expenditure on new dwellings of £7660 in the last eight months, how did they manage last year when the average was £13,000 a month? Here are the returns coming,down, and there is a reason for it? I do not know how many carpenters there are unemployed in Invercargill, but I do know that last week six of our red pine saw mills were not working and they employ about 80 hands. This is at a time when we are supposed to be having a boom.” A member: You cannot use timber without carpenters. Mr Hargest said there was no dearth of carpenters in Invercargill, but there was a dearth of people desirous of building houses. He was having a house built himself, and he was not going to build a house at the price the Government was building them. All the talk about the bounteous prosperity the country was having today was founded on sand. The people were not so prosperous as the Ministers and other members opposite claimed. They spoke of the prosperity of the farmers, but they knew that the farmers were not going to be so prosperous this year as they were last. They knew that the costs were beating them—going up and up. They knew, too,' that the people in the towns, especially those with large families, were not any better off than they were and were not going to be.