ELIMINATING SLUMS.

Taranaki Daily News, 15 September 1934, Page 6

ELIMINATING SLUMS.

It is to be hoped the suggestion of cooperation between the Government and local authorities for the elimination of unsuitable housing accommodation will bear fruit. Compared with Europe New Zealand is happily free from slum conditions. At the same time there are, particularly in the larger cities, many dwellings that are far from satisfactory for human occupation. They are relics, many of them, of the Dominion’s rapid expansion, when local government was in its infancy and the need for some kind of shelter outran considerations for the future of a municipality. In process of time the sites occupied by the poor class of dwelling have become valuable chiefly because residence in. such houses enables the worker to be within easy reach of his employment, a qualification that has a particular appeal when work is scarce and must be sought constantly. Competition forced up rents, and overcrowding naturally followed to a degree that only social workers know. Two and sometimes more families are living in premises designed for one only. The deterioration of the buildings is thereby hastened, and conditions for the inhabitants become so much the worse. In suggesting a concerted effort to improve such housing conditions the Minister of Finance, the Rt. Hon. J. G. Coates, was careful to say he did not propose any wild borrowing. It was, he said, a fact that local authorities could borrow at cheap rates, especially with the co-operation of the State, and the removal of undesirable dwellings would serve at least two good purposes. It would create employment, especially skilled employment, and it would remove unsatisfactory conditions of living at the least possible cost to the community. Add to that the value of slum i elimination and prevention from the

humanitarian standpoint, and the additional security afforded thereby to more modem municipal developments and the case presented by Mr. Coates for immediate action seems overwhelmingly strong.