NEW ZEALAND AT THE CROSSROADS

Wanganui Chronicle, 23 August 1948, Page 4

NEW ZEALAND AT THE CROSSROADS

(Tnis is the third of a series of articles sponsored by a committee of citizens purely from patriotic motives, and absolutely free from any political or sectional interest) (By "Spotlight”) “Sick and tired of being shoved round. Can anyone help us, young married couple, by letting us small flat or something before we’re forced to live apart?’’ Such was the wording of a recent advertisement in a city paper. Another in the same issue was headed,: “A wedding has been postponed,” and described the plight of a young couple who had been forced to put off their wedding because they could find neither house or flat to live in.

While these advertisements are now so familiar as scarcely to excite comment, other people a shade more fortunate than the adveritsers, live in transit camps, motor camps, caravans and other unsuitable situations—conditions which place a severe strain on the illusion that New Zealand at the present time in enjoying a politick! and social imillenium.

Such generalisations as the statement that prior to 1935 New Zealanders “lived in shacks” (a statement actually printed in a pamphlet issued in 1941) do not stand up to a moment’s examination. If there has been an age of shacks and improvised dwelling places in recent New Zealand history, this is it. It is also the age of wooden spouting and downpipes, of treated sap flooring, pinus msignis frames, of temporary malthoid roofs in some cases, of Oregon at a fabulous price, and of other innovations and makeshifts on which the house-builders of other days would have leaked with amazement and incredulity.

THE BUILDING BOTTLENECKS. The Government deserves full credit for its effort to overtake the housing shortage, and it is merely a measure of the desperate bottleneck in labour and materials that the effort has been hedged about with unprecedented restrictions on floor area, and on other types of building construction.

Meanwhile those features of Government policy which have conspired to bring about the emergency still exercise their insidious influence. When the Fair Rents Act was passed in 1936 the Rt. Hon. G. W. Forbes warned against discouraging people from providing houses needed by the community. “Anyone who builds a house should not be regarded as the common enemy,” said Mr. Forbes. The Government claimed to be alive to the danger. Said the Hun. H. G. R. Mason, who was in charge of the Bill: “I am not going to disguise the difficulties which arise from rent restriction legislation.” As the Bill was to expire on September 30, 1937, he thought that would safeguard the position. The late Hon. Mark Eagan, then leader oly the Legislative Council, was even more specific. ‘ This Bill is to operate lor only one year,” he said, “and personally I am very glad it is, for if it were longer I am afraid it would be difficult for me or anyone else to defend it.”

Twelve years have passed. Not only is the Bill still operative, but its provisions have been greatly extended.

Its effects have been precisely what might have been anticipated. If the Government, before blundering into this legislation, had studied the opinions of one of the most eminent British socialists, Dr. Addison (now Lord Addison) it might have been forewarned. Speaking Of the rent restriction legislation introduced in Britain during the first World War, Dr. Addison said: “I am sure all of us who were concerned in the passing of these laws never quite anticipated what the effect would be in preventing the building of new houses in the future.”

The effect in short has been to injure those whom the legislation was intended to benefit. Whereas, in 1936, and in all the years before, there was no city or town in New Zealand in which a tenant could not, at short notice, and even with little difficulty, obtain reasonable housing accommodation at a moderate enough rent, today the prospective tenant must first find a vacant house, and then must bribe or cajole to gain preference over a horde of competing applicants. THEN AND NOW.

Twenty years ago, in July, 1928, there were two columns of ’’house to let” advertisements in one issue of a Wellington newspaper. This was in the days when New Zealanders were supposed to be “living in shacks.” One cannot assign tne changed situation to any one simple cause, but there is no doubt that the Fair Rents Act, which denies the owner the most elementary rights to his own property, tends to make the erection and ownership of houses a distasteful and ’sometimes unprofitable responsibility. So, too, the ‘ spec” builder has been discouraged. As far as those people are concerned who view the “spec” builder and investor as monsters o" iniquity, bloodsuckers, leeches, etc., fattening on the hapless tenant, this

is an eminently desirable result; but insofar as it has limited building for letting purposes to the State Housing Department, which has proved singularly incapable of meeting the pentup demand, it. proves to have been a most unfortunate result, particularly for those young couples newly married or subject to transfer, who do not own homes of their own. Years ago, before the first World War, I can remember being taken by my parents to inspect a number of houses being built in a suburban street in Wanganui. The houses were being built by a “spec” builder, and they are still standing, old-fashioned but' sound. My parents were able to select one, for' which the rent was 15s per week. It was a roomy, comfortable, and for those days, convenient house. The simplicity of obtaining a house, in those benighted days, contrasts favourably with today’s iiuge backlog of 52,000 applicants for State houses, of whom at least 20,000 are classified as urgent and even pitiful cases. To the Fair Rents Act has been added, in recent years, the Land Sales Act, an effective deterrent against the spontaneous sale of houses, and even more so against the cutting up of sites on which new houses might be built. The fact that both Acts were passed with the best intentions is incontestable, but unfortunately has no bearing whatever on the results achieved. Alleviation of the housing position may be expected as more and more State houses come to completion, but the social and other problems inherent in the creations of large, now “artificial’’ suburbs will remain, as

will the serious maladjustment caused by the advantageous rents enjoyed by State tenants, partly at the expense of other and less favoured taxpayers. There will still be an immense accumulation of other work to be tackled —hospitals, hotels, Government. offices, flats, office blocks and the like—and the magnitude of this task makes some new stimulus and reorganisation urgently necessary. •More workers -more skilled hands: more working hours, if need be, till the crisis has passed. Such proposals may be misconstrued as an at 1 a ci; on hard-won working conditions, but the needs of the people as a whole should be paramount. It is not a question of whether wo can afford to take drastic measures in the building emergency, but whether we can afford not to. . .