SLUMDOM.

Stratford Evening Post, Volume XXIX, Issue 129, 24 July 1911, Page 6

SLUMDOM.

AN INTERESTING LECTURE. VAR IOUS SUGGESTIONS. Great interest was created in Auckland by Mr. C. C. Rondo’s lecture on the slump, of Auckland and Wellington, and it is no exaggeration to say that at least a thousand people who wished to hoar his lecture upon the subject could not be accommodated in lira Choral,Hall. Ml l . Reade displayed a striking .series of pictures of, houses in' Auckland and Wellington :iu varying stages of dissipation, some of them condemned premises, and an explanation was made that many of. these unlovely spots remained to make vile the prospect, lor the simple reason that the powers ol health .officers and sanitary inspectors were so restricted that an owner could frequently oppose tin order of condemnation; consequently they not only remained, but were converted into factories and workshops of. sorts.; The following pictures dealt with houses against rat-infested stables and houses with back-yards which were only a “square yard” each. Tlio —Typical Instance —

was a four-rodmed place against a stable wall, with an outhouse waiter tap to supply the domestic waiter, and an incubus in the shape of 9s per week rent. The lecturer knew, he said, of over fifty homes in the city with just (such accommodation. Thou came Glides showing houses cramped up against stables and trap sheds, with one back yard' used in common for a number .of places and no inside convenience in tiiein, blocked out from light and air space, and in acute stages of decay. In one such house of four rooms lived a family of eight people, and live children slept in a bedroom 10ft. square.; jll The breadwinner earned 30s to 455, and paid lis lid rHtfeek rent. N&if Mr Reade displayed, pictures of a;; “lot” of houses which had been c'oiid mined vears ago, but which, with the aid of q-liitewqsb, .had managed to. impress the Magistrate to veto the health officer’s report. One outside water tap supplied three houses with water. Houses with kennol-liko. rooms and tunnel approaches, and showing various stages of picturesque ruin, were screened, and the lecturer stated that those wore found on his visit to be leaky, damp, and many of them without drainage. In the —Cellar of One Dwelling—

’no had found six' people living—father, mother, three children, and a young gill hoarder. They all lived in the, one room, which was in a filthy condition. Whilst he was making inquiries on the'subject the family disappeared, and the cellar had since remained unoccupied. There were frequent instances of two families living in the one insanitary house because of high rents. Among the pictures shown was one of a block of fourteen houses and a shop, all sinning one back yard (50ft by 60ft), one washhouse, and one outside water tap. There were thirty inmates for the whole number. Only three sanitary conveniences were provided. The rents were Os to 9s a week, bringing in the owner £5 a week from the block, which was recently sold for over £3OOO. That would give some idea ofwhat ■ it would cost the : eky; to acquire the land and tv. ipe - out the slums. Another instance was : given in which the inmates. of (six houses and a shop shared one common back yard and one

single tap.' Mr Kendo stated that at the presellt time a pressing need existed for the supply of a number of cheap houses with rentals of 4s to 8s a week. Even if the expense ( seemed heavy, it was a question whether it would not pay the city in the long run to acquire some sites of the' slums now, using the frontages for commercial purposes and the centre for municipal houses. As striking contrasts to the Auckland conditions he threw on the screen uioturos of the ■ —Workmen’s Homes—erected and lot at cheap rentals at Port Sunlight and Hampstead Heath in England. 1 The mention of the name of the city engineer as being the author of an excellent suggestion to acquire a lot in the vicinity of Alexandra Street drew a tremendous burst of applause from the audience. The remedy, ho went on to say, lay in two directions. The first method was for the City Council to resume the worst areas and rebuild corporation owned buildings. Quite a number of British cities had gone in for wholesale demolition. It had been found ruinously expensive, and not by any means the whole solution, because experience had shown that when an overcrowded area was wiped out the people carried their dirty habits to some other quarters, to create afresh the old slum conditions, and many of them did not return to take possession of the new houses built for them. The second method was to have stricter and more explicit laws, by which the onus of remedying the defects was placed on the people who cheated them-—the landlords. For

that powers were wanted similar to those conferred on British local bodies and health officers by Mr John Burns’s celebrated Housing and Town Planning Act of 1909. Under that a council, at the instigation of a health officer, could order the demolition of a defective house or condemn it for habitation until the owner repaired it in accordance with the requirements of the health officer. The health officer should Ire the

—Final Court of Appeal.—

It was tire thoroughly commercialised individual, extorting the largest return from tiro poorer classes at lire least possible expense to himself, that must be brought to hook. By the second method the ratepayers would not be called on to face heavy expenditure, and it seemed the most reasonable and rational policy for the gradual and steady elimination of slum conditions.

The Hon. G. Fowlds, who presided, had some interesing remarks to make both before and after the lecture. He pointed out that legislation was not all that was required to sot right the conditions that had arisen. They should never have come about, ca eu with the legislation now in force. What was essential was a healthy, cultivated, and instructed public opinion that would not tolerate such a state of affairs. Without such, a fooling any legislation in the world would be a dead letter. Having heard the lecture, and seen plainly the conditions existing iu the city, he asked, Was it not time something was done? He added that during next session he intended to place before Parliament a town-planning Bill of a comprehensive nature. Mr Arthur Myers, M.P., congratulated the lecturer on the work he had done in rousing public opinion on the matter. Mi Myers hoped that, with the assistance the Hon. G. Fowlds, something would bo done next session in getting a Town-plan-ning Bill of a comprehensive nature through Parliament. He moved a hearty vote of thanks to Mr Reade, and a resolution— That this meeting would heartily welcome from the Government a legislative measure conferring wider powers upon the health officers and local bodies, sufficient to enable them to compel owners and tenants to keep their premises clean and in habitable repair, and in every respect to enable the health officers and local bodies to wipe out the menace of bad arid insanitary housing conditions. The motion was seconded by Mr P. M. Mackay and carried unanimously.