The Sun 42 WYNDHAM STREET, AUCKLAND SATURDAY, AUGUST 24, 1929 HOUSING A LA MODE

Sun (Auckland), Volume III, Issue 750, 24 August 1929, Page 10

The Sun 42 WYNDHAM STREET, AUCKLAND SATURDAY, AUGUST 24, 1929 HOUSING A LA MODE

PEOPLE with money will always be able to establish themselves in comfort, but city workers of small means, and without the home ties that justify a cottage and garden in the suburbs, are iii an entirely different position. Hence a peculiar interest attaches to the Auckland City Council’s decision to over-ride its own by-laws and ereate for itself a salutary power to banish the class of apartments described, for want of a better term, as “bachelor flats.” In the correspondence received by the council on the subject was a letter from the Director of Town-Planning who, though seemingly an authority in the best position to know, admitted that he could see no reason to challenge the provision of such apartments. No doubt the Director of Town-Planning made the reasonable and tacit implication that his endorsement would be subject to rigid control of buildings which might otherwise become unsavoury centres. Without such control very proper objection might be taken to the system. But the City Councillors seem suspicious on other grounds. Their fear tha£ the introduction of one-roomed flats may lead to slum conditions parallel to the tenements of American and Old World cities shows very plainly that they are entirely ignorant of what has been going on in Auckland for some years past. If the one-roomed flat in this particular instance is an evil thing, then how much more evil are the converted apartments that abound in the city today? In one of the buildings to which the City Council took objection it was proposed that the apartments should consist of large single rooms, each with separate conveniences, bathroom and kitchenette. That the main room would be a more agreeable place for the tenant’s rest and leisure, the beds were to be of the folding variety which no doubt would facilitate a general scheme infinitely preferable to the so-called “bed-sitting-rooms” in which many a city worker resides today. The City Council appears to be lamentably ignorant of the fact that large existing blocks of flats may and do contain single rooms which have neither separate bathrooms nor separate kitchenettes. The bachelor girl or the bachelor lad, and sometimes the married couple, prepare meals over a stove or gas-ring in a corner of the room, and the other essential amenities are shared with the tenants of neighbouring flats. If the members of the council recoil in pious horror when one-roomed apartments on far more modern lines are proposed, why do they not direct their attention to existing conditions? To be consistent, the council cannot apply its ban in only restricted cases. It must begin a crusade against the bed-sitting-rooms, the single rooms with bed and gas-stoves, the so-called flats slapped up with a series of partitions across passages and verandahs, and all the other makeshift places in which people live for the primary reason that the rents are cheap and they cannot afford to go elsewhere. The truth is that in every city there is a demand for some such facilities. One of the councillors earnestly pictured the domestic delights of a suburban home and garden. Prom an idealistic point of view the home and garden are incomparably superior to the narrow confines of the city flat. But, unfortunately, not everyone is in a position to maintain a home and garden, and how ridiculous it would be if the bachelor shop-girl working for 50s a week, and starting work at 8.30 a.m. in the morning, had to go to New Lynn or Mount Roskill for the ivied cottage which apparently represents the civic visionary’s ideal! There may be the danger that one-roomed apartments will later become slum tenements. Auckland’s experience has certainlv not been extensive, but the danger has not so far manifested itself. The contradictory part is that, while the council, on slender legal grounds against which there is almost certain to be an appeal lodged, may ban the one-roomed apartment, a building in which the sets of two or more rooms are narrow and confined places of the meanest type would perforce have to be given its formal approval. Yet in these two rooms the tenants could sleep three deep, if the necessity arose, and the council would have no apparent remedy against them provided they were observing certain simple hygienie rules. Thus the stand the council has taken up is seen to be full of illogicalities, and open to challenge at many points. To lay down a general rule in such cases is dangerous, for where the one-roomed flat is managed under proper control, as it is in the famous Lavanburg system of dwellings in New York, it can give immense satisfaction and exceptional living conditions to people who otherwise would be meanly domiciled. Here in Auckland, the council may not know, are two-roomed flats in which as many as five or six people reside. They are not necessarily living in unhealthy conditions, but the simple fact that they are doing so defeats the object of the City Council’s latest manoeuvre. Some of the buildings now serving as fiats in the city are fifty, sixty, and more, years old. Even though old, many of these places are commodious and comfortable. Others, again, are of the warren type. Yet these may be perpetuated while the erection of new buildings on modern lines is banned because the council fails to recognise that the one-roomed apartment, under rigid control, meets a modern economic necessity.