REHABILITATION LOANS

Bay of Plenty Beacon, Volume 10, Issue 58, 4 December 1946, Page 7

REHABILITATION LOANS

SHARP RISE RECORDED £29,468,683 ADVANCED Showing a sharp rise on the total for the. previous month rehabilitation loans authorised during October amounted to £1,500,528. This was £330,000 more than for September and brought the total authorisations made to date to £29,468,683. A feature of the figures, apart from the recovery from the temporary decline of the previous month, was the greatly increased number of loans for building new dwellings—292 as against 136 in September-—probably partly due to the recent 50 per cent, allocation of timber to. ex-service-men for home-building. Financial advances have so far (that is to the end of October) been made to 37,748 ex-servicemen and women, of whom 34,624 served with the forces overseas, the remainder being discharged home servicemen and women, merchant seamen and widows and dependants of deceased soldiers, sailors and airmen. Authorisations during October numbered 1671.

With a further 134 farm loans, the number of ex-servicemen assisted to buy farms of their own reached 3109. This meant an outlay of £572,550 for the month, and a total amount advanced of £11.843,897. There are also 219 ex-servicemen now developing Crown sub-divisions with the promise of a title. Loans to buy and build houses rose in number from 453 in September to 627 in October, making the total at the end of the month 11,906, representing £13.641,527. A further 6118 had at the same date been assisted to obtain State rental houses, which together with those assisted to obtain farms made a total of more than 21,000 men who had received

some form of rehabilitation housing assistance by the end of the month under review. October housing authorisations were: Loans to buy 335 (£342,233), loans to build 292 (£418,372) —as against 136 in September valued at £192,790. State house allocations under the 50 per cent, scheme were 168. Supplementary housing loans granted during the month numbered 368 valued at £51,737. There were free-of-interest and nonrepayable except on the sale of the security. They are meant to bridge the gap between present-day costs and pre-war prices. Until the end of October there had been 6779 of these loan£ granted representing £1,020,699. A further 125 ex-servicemen were granted loans to commence business during October, the value of these being £91,484. Altogether by the end of the month 4049 ex-servicemen had been assisted in this way at an outlay of £2,293,424. Other financial assistance given during the month was: 763 free-of-interest furniture loans (£70,706), 12 free-of-interest loans to purchase tools of trade (£465), and ten miscellaneous advances (£4718). This brought the figures under these heads until the end of October to: Furniture 17,490 loans (£1,608,563), tools of trade 960 (£31,926), and miscellaneous advances 234 (£49,346).