HOUSING SHORTAGE.

Bay of Plenty Beacon, Volume 8, Issue 13, 3 October 1944, Page 4

HOUSING SHORTAGE.

Sir —I read with interest two art- ' 9 icles in your paper of tlie 29th September. One stressed the very acute housing shortage in this town atad the other was a notice of a meeting to be held in connection with the proposed Red Gross Hall. I know the question of a Red Cross Hall has been under consideration for some time and it. seems to me that when 6uch a terrible shortage of houses exists, it is> not a fair or right thing that building material and labour should be used for a hall when the shortage of same is given as one reason for "the lack of house building.

The. Red Cross has done excellent work here (as in all other centres) during the live years of war work without a hall of their own, and 1 think that now the end of. the war seems in view, it *is the wrong time to put up yet another hall in this town. I would like to know just how many of the. other Red. Cross centres have built their own. halls under the present conditions of very expensive and scarce labour and material.

I write with feeling as It have had bitter experience of house hunting. Granting that the material and labour used for a hall would not go very far towards alleviating thq housing need, I still think it wrong that even one family (and we still have, to house all our returning men) should go homeless while halls are; being built. Yours etc.^ "HOUSES EVERY TIME."