HOUSING PROBLEM.

Wanganui Chronicle, Volume LXVI, Issue 17579, 24 May 1919, Page 5

HOUSING PROBLEM.

10,000 HOUSES NEEDED IN NEW ZEALAND.

(Par Press Association.) WELLNGTON, May 23. The housing problem formed the subject of a paper prepared by Mr. F. W. Rowley, Superintendent of Workers' Dwellings, read at" the Town Planning Conference. The paper dealt more particularly with the erection of homes for workers. It was stated that now the workers' dwellings system had passed the experimental stage it must be developed on a much larger scale. Some of the occupants of rural dwellings had done exceedingly well out of their land. To make a scheme of erecting workers' dwellings really successful it must be made possible to erect tbem in wholesale fashion, thereby reducing the initial cost materially. In this connection the paper mentioned the great advantage from all points of view of building a new village o rsuburb close to a railway line, but outside any existing borough, and on what was at the time of erecting; the villati|s merely farming land. In a settlement of that sort all the town planners' ideall could be incorporated.

Mr. Howard (Christchurch) said that n housing poheme -was an immediat* necessity. There was need for 10,{KK) new houses. The Government should allocate £3,000,000 free of interest to start the movement.

During the discussion on the paper Mr. ,1. Campbell, Government architect, said that tUfa day of entirely wooden houses was passing. To reduce the cost of building the size of sections could be reduced with advantage, while huildini by-laws should eb re-modelled to .enable new materials to be used.