TE AWAMUTU COURIER. Printed on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays. WEDNESDAY, 2nd SEPTEMBER, 1936. “NO ACTION TAKEN.”

Te Awamutu Courier, Volume 53, Issue 3803, 2 September 1936, Page 4

TE AWAMUTU COURIER. Printed on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays. WEDNESDAY, 2nd SEPTEMBER, 1936. “NO ACTION TAKEN.”

LET it be hoped that the State Advances Corporation will not seriously regard the attitude of the Borough Council as- indicative of the housing situation in Te Awamutu. At its meeting on Monday the Council had before it a letter from the Corporaion announcing the inauguration of a new housing policy and inviting the Council to co-operate with the Government in promoting home-building projects. The communication was capable of a wide and wise interpretation, and although there was a direct reference in it to municipal financing, other avenues of, approach might worthily have had consideration. But the question was, apparently, as one speaker so frankly admitted, beyond the Council. For incapacity—or was it ineptitude ? the Council revealed itself when it registered “no action taken.” On its agenda the Advances Corporation letter followed a request for permission to cut the grass in a camp site reserve, and this was a subject for more consideration than the housing project, and it revealed a strange incapacity to measure the quality or importance of events in our civic administration.

However, this is no occasion for criticism of what the Council elects to do or not to do. The thing that matters is that a very real and pressing need in Te Awamutu just now may not be realised in official Wellington as a result of the Council’s failure to present the case on the citizens’ behalf. Whereas the housing shortage is acute, with available residential buildings of any sort at a premium, and although many people who would take up residence here are suffering discomfort and disability on account of the lack of housing accommodation, the Council’s "no action taken ” may create an entirely wrong impression. After ail. the Council is supposed to be the representative voice of the people, and who could blame the Corporation if it directed attention to applications which have the endorsement of civic authorities elsewhere and who have certified as to the urgency of' the claim ? It could be said as a truth that few centres in New Zealand today have a more perplexing housing problem than has Te Awamutu, and the marvel is that the elected representatives of Te Awamutu should have treated as commonplace an opportunity to press the claim for consideration.

It would be quite competent to read into the Corporation’s letter a desire to co-operate with the civic authorities and to co-opt them voluntarily in the furtherance of the State housebuilding plans. The logical interpretation suggests that the Government seeks first of all to overtake the leeway in home-building and as a first step desired a stock-taking of the deterred schemes of municipal finance for this purpose. In addition it is not beyond the bounds of reason to imagine that priority would be given to proposals which combined the utilisation of local body powers, because, in such circumstances, with the resources of the State pledged to assure ready finance, local knowledge and local effort would be pooled in the speedy fulfilment of the building plans. This may, or may not, have involved the Council as a landlord—though it does not necessarily follow that it would. As example, the Corporation asked whether the Council had caused a housing survey to be made in Te Awamutu, and such a survey would have revealed many things. It might have disclosed that there would be little danger in a municipal housing scheme to use endowment lands for dwellings to pass into the occupation ef borough employees; or, similarly, proposals might have been formulated in connection with vacant Crown endowments on which State houses could be erected for tenancy by State servants—railway, postal, school teachers, and the like. Or, carrying inquiry still further, the Council’s survey might very easily have led to negotiations with employers to co-op-erate in housing projects for their employees. After all, where there is a direct link between employment and tenancy the landlord risk is not very great, and in many lands the advanced social-industrial code embraces the idea of a combination of employment and tenancy. Carrying its survey still further, the Council might very well have found virtue in a suggestion that its office could become a clearing-house for individual finance applications, assisting the

citizen in his approach to the Corporation and reducing in a very large way the routine of procedure which must arise in the treatment of unsifted applications in far-away Wellington. Very certainly there was at the Council’s disposal scope and opportunity on the citizens’ behalf for much constructive effort. The way opened for a blending in the powers of government, national and local, for a speeding of the administrative machinery, and for the fulfilment of a long-deferred want in Te Awamutu —a want that now classes as an urgent need.

Well might the Council hold a special meeting to retrieve the mistake it made last Monday. In its agenda was really one important subject, and it was disposed of in a few brief moments. “No action taken ” is more a disservice to Te Awamutu than it is a reflection on the Council. The position to-day is that Severy home in this borough is a community asset; in population and trade in everything that arises out of a healthy domestic condition—Te Awamutu suffers the acute housing shortage that has developed in recent years. Anything and everything the Council can do should be done. It can do much, but will it retrace its steps from last Monday ? If it fails to do so, then very certainly Te Awamutu will have cause to regard the incapacity of its elected representatives ,as a serious handicap ,to the welfare of the citizens and the future of the town.