HOUSING: AN URGENT PROBLEM

Te Ao Hou, June 1959, Page 48

This Panmure home is typical of the low-cost high-quality housing built by the Department of Maori Affairs. Last year 129 such houses were built in the Auckland metropolitan area and although such an effort cannot be the complete solution to the problem, the department's scheme produces more good housing for the Auckland Maori than all other sources combined. HOUSING: AN URGENT PROBLEM by ELSDON CRAIG The most urgent problem facing the Maori people is that of housing. Better housing is the solution for most of their social evils. Nowhere is the need for adequate housing more apparent than in Auckland, the main centre of the urban Maori population. Houses are less easy to obtain in urban areas than they are in the country districts. Consequently, pakeha landlords with homes to let are inclined to give preference to pakehas and to refuse accommodation to Maoris. Many of these landlords feel that the Maori is not as capable as the pakeha in looking after rented premises, basing their opinions on the many dilapidated Maoris homes they see in some localities. This tendency to discriminate against coloured people and to generalise unduly on questions of Maori behaviour is a contradiction of the proud claim of New Zealanders that Maori and pakeha are equal. The prejudices against Maoris are more apparent in Auckland than elsewhere. Early in the process of migration of the Maori from the country to the town there was a determination by many pakehas to discourage the movement. They insisted that the Maori was better off in the country where he could pursue his communal habits and cultural interests than he would be in the city. But this attitude was really prompted by the feeling that the Maori, with different social and cultural standards, would become a problem in a closely-settled and essentially European community. It is significant that fewer objections to the presence of Maoris in the city have been heard in recent years. There has been a greater will-

STATE ACTIVITY The Auckland branch of the Department of Maori Affairs has a staff of about seventy-five. The head of the branch, Mr A. E. Edwards (left), was born in Thames in 1901, and spent his entire working life in the public service in Auckland. Apart from the housing and welfare of the Auckland Maori, the branch has a variety of responsibilities: land development operations throughout the Waikato, Maniapoto and Hauraki districts, service to 23,500 beneficiaries of the Maori Trustee, and a variety of business arising out of Maori land titles. Big jobs over the last year were the preliminaries of setting up the Otakanini incorporation near Auckland, and the incorporation of owners of the Taharoa ironsands. Mr Edwards and his staff have managed to keep their housing costs right down (about £2300 for houses such as illustrated on these pages) and manage to pick up a steady flow of good flat well-drained sections in Auckland suburbs for an average of £575 (top limit £700). the men behind the Auckland building programme, from left to right, Messrs C. N. Rae, A. J. Wise, A. J. McCallum (section head), L. E. Armstrong and W. A. Maguinness.

Built by the Department of Maori Affairs, this home (belonging to Mr and Mrs R. Hotu) is typical of Maori housing in Hendon Street. See next page. ingness on the part of the community to receive the Maori in its midst. Employers acknowledge that many Maoris have proved that they are capable of undertaking types of work for which they were thought to be unsuited 12 years ago. At the same time many Maoris have shown that they are just as competent as the pakeha in home management, indicating to the earlier critics that generalisations about Maori behaviour are unjustified, if not dangerous. As a result of this changed attitude more Maoris are succeeding in making homes in the better suburbs of Auckland instead of being confined to depressed areas like Freeman's Bay. The “pepper-potting policy” of distributing indiivdual Maori homes among those of Europeans has been successfuly pursued by the Maori Affairs Department. Not only has it stimulated self-reliance among the Maori occupants but also it has impressed on pakeha neighbours that their pre-conceived ideas about Maori attitudes have not always been correct.