BAY OF PLENTY BEACON Published Tuesdays and Fridays. TUESDAY, NOV. 25, 1947 EMPTY HOUSES

Bay of Plenty Beacon, Volume 12, Issue 1, 25 November 1947, Page 4

BAY OF PLENTY BEACON Published Tuesdays and Fridays. TUESDAY, NOV. 25, 1947 EMPTY HOUSES

With the housing situation as it is today, there seems little ground for opposition to the general principle that unused accommodation should be made available to families who have no homes and are, in many cases, living in conditions that are a disgrace to the community as a whole. However, it would be unfair at this juncture to say there might not be .good reasons for objection to some clauses of the Fair Rents Amendment Bill. But any Government move to ease the acute housing shortage will be welcomed by the thousands of homeless families who will be glad to have even makeshift accommodation that is an improvement upon their present conditions. Every citizen of a free country (or a country that has traditions of freedom behind it) naturally hates the ugly sound of the word “compulsion”, but if that is necessary for the public good, then those opposed to it will be a minority. In this case there is justification for any means, however drastic, that will give people a chance to build the home-life that is the very basis of Christian society.

It is generally agreed that the children of a nation are its first and most important asset. It is also generally agreed that their early training and environment is the most potent factor in the forming of national character.

What sort of national character can we expect to develop amongst children who are being brought up under conditions of crowding that might have been tolerable in the caves of precivilisation days, but are certainly no sort of background for the enlightened citizen of tomorrow? What chance do we suppose a mother of a family has of giving her children surroundings of refinement and a sense of self-respect when the whole family have to try and live in one dingy room, or even in a tent?

Constant nerve-strain, lack of elemental conveniences, lack of privacy, must inevitably eat into the moral fibre of our people. If we want a nation of delinquents, their natures turned bitter with the constant bickering that is the inevitable outcome of the lack of facilities for that peace and privacy that are necessities for the development of poise and a balanced personality, if we want a nation of slum dwellers, with little respect for property or the human rights of others, if we want a nation of nervous wrecks and misanthropes, the perpetuation of these conditions is the way to build it. If we want our children to grow up with a background of refinement and self-respect, then we must all co-operate to do whatever we can to create the conditions in which that can be developed. And if there are those amongst us who cannot see that point of view, who let purely selfish considerations blind them to the real and far wider issues at stake, then if compulsion must be their portion, there will be few who will cavil at the Government’s taking strong measures.