HOUSING

Te Ao Hou, May 1957, Page 29

HOUSING Slow but pleasing progress is being made in regard to housing. It is impossible to obtain an accurate estimate of all the houses built for or occupied by Maoris in 1956, but the Department of Maori Affairs has reached a new record by building a national total of 527 houses. In certain towns also there is a pool of state rental houses made available for Maoris. Add to these the houses that Maoris have got from other sources and the number must be the most satisfactory so far. The Maoris in Wellington and Lower Hutt have obtained their fair share of these, and as a parson it has been pleasant to me to note the good number of parishioners who a few years ago eked out an existence in rooming houses and now have their own homes. I contend that the terrific improvement evident in the behaviour patterns of the urban Maori of the Wellington area is, in its largest measure, due to better housing conditions. We have two neighbourhoods where these new houses are grouped together which provide an interesting background for the comparative study of evolving community patterns. In both these communities the people are in danger of preserving their Maori entity less with the norms and mores of a truly Maori culture than with some of the worst pakeha behaviour patterns. It is I think true to say that week-end parties are much more robust in these two centres than in any other part. Also in these two Maori communities there is practically no social interaction between the Maori adults and the rest of the neighbourhood. Yet, at Waiwhetu, a very large number of second generation young people reaching adolescent age have made wide contacts at the local High Schools and in sporting bodies and acquired a much more sophisticated type of deportment and behaviour pattern, so that they are unconsciously demanding new standards within the home, and in my five years as a resident of the Waiwhetu Maori community, social and domestic improvement has been beyond all recognition due I feel to these new demands on the parents. On the other hand the majority of Maori householders are scattered about amongst the community at large and as their parson I find them completely at ease and fairly satisfactorily integrated with the pakeha neighbourhood community: (continued on page 51)