PART II.—HOW TO BUILD MORE HOUSES

NZ Services Current Affairs Bulletin, Volume 2, Issue 4, 21 February 1944, Page 6

PART II.—HOW TO BUILD MORE HOUSES

1. Some of the Difficulties If we want to catch up with the housing shortage we must step up the pre-war rate of building by 3,000 to 4,000 houses a year. There are two main sets of difficulties to be overcome before this

can be done. The first relates to the acute shortage of many important building materials. The second relates to the organization of the building industry. Every house built in this country needs imported materials—paint for the outside walls, wallpaper for the inside walls. Copper, steel, and iron fittings for the kitchen, bathroom, and washhouse, nails to hold the boards together, and copper wire and other fittings for the electrical installations. Owing to the war, all these things are hard to get; few of them can be satisfactorily replaced by New-Zealand-made substitutes. For several years after the war they will still be hard to get, partly because it takes time to convert industries back to civilian production, partly because countries which have been intensively bombed, as Britain has, will have a better claim to building materials than New Zealand.

2. The Traditional Way of building Houses ■ z The other. obstacle in the way of a rapid' expansion of house building in New Zealand is that here, as in other countries, the building' industry has never been organized for mass production, and has been affected little by improved production methods in other industries. Fifty years ago a house was built by dumping timber, bricks, mortar, nails, piping, and roofing material on the site and setting a gang of tradesmen to work. Until' fairly recently there had been no fundamental change in this method. True, there were the beginnings of prefabrication in the manufacture away from the building site of items which could easily be standardized— 1 windows, fanlights, doors, and interior joinery. But beyond this the principle of carting the materials to the site in bulk has persisted. It is a slow business. Operations which in other industries would be carried out'by machinery are in the building of a house carried out by individual craftsmen. If it rains, work ceases. 3. The State and Private Enterprise In New Zealand the building industry has another peculiarity which complicates the problem of increasing and speeding up the output of houses. In normal times about 60 per cent, of all buildings are put up by the State and the rest by private enterprise. Where there is no shortage of labour and materials and the supply of houses is adequate, this creates no difficulty. When labour and materials are short and more houses are urgently needed, competition for labour and materials leads to' confusion. If, for instance, the * State embarks on a housing programme without regard to the effect of this programme on private . enterprise, the result may be to discourage the private builder. To ensure an orderly and efficient distribution of labour and materials, the Government has set up the Ministry of Works, the functions of which are shown by the diagram on page 10. In the first place I the Ministry brings all State building together under one authority. In the second place,- through its control over labour and materials and the issue of building permits, it can co-ordinate all building activity, public and private.