BAY OF PLENTY BEACON Published Tuesdays and Fridays. TUESDAY, JANUARY 6, 1948 WHY NOT FACE FACTS?

Bay of Plenty Beacon, Volume 12, Issue 10, 6 January 1948, Page 4

BAY OF PLENTY BEACON Published Tuesdays and Fridays. TUESDAY, JANUARY 6, 1948 WHY NOT FACE FACTS?

It is generally conceded that this country could support a much larger population than it carries at present, and it is also generally conceded that considerable population expansion is vitally necessary for the development and protection of New Zealand. There is constant talk of immigration. Others claim larger families would provide the answer.

But the facts seem to indicate that housing is the key to the situation. Why not face the facts?

No parents without any place to live would want to increase the size of their families and thereby increase their worries. The way the cards are stacked against him today, the father of a family has scant encouragement. All his costs are ruinously high. Rental houses are not available. To buy or build is often beyond a wage-earner’s means, unless he is newly-mar-ried or childless and has therefore had a chance to make something on the inflated wage scale of today. But, for the family man, costs have risen nut of all proportion to wages, and he has had no change to save. The State housing scheme, whilst it has alleviated the desperate position somewhat, has proved woefully inadequate. It would seem that a policy much more dynamic must be adopted. From whatever angle one examines present-day problems in New Zealand, one comes up against the housing ' problem. Shortage of men in certain industries? Men trained and qualified in those industries working at just any old job elsewhere? Answer to an apparently crazy paradox—No 'houses. Juniors hashing up senior jobs and drawing senior pay? Skilled men plying shovels in some rural backwater where houses are available? Yes, it goes on all over the country, because there are no houses.

Desperate men are plunging into ruinous building projects, mortgaging themselves beyond all hope of redemption to get a roof over the heads of their families. Despite the Land Sales Court property prices are skyhigh. So far as the housing situation is concerned, State control has failed. It has failed to provide enough houses fast enough. It has failed to control prices. It has failed to control rents. True, there are regulations allegedly controlling all those things, as there are regulations controlling most other things today. Few of them have achieved their purposes, but have merely added confusion to a mess that is already chaotic. Why not face the facts and take off the brake?

Why not give private enterprise a chance to do what the State has failed to do? Though there may have been some who took advantage of a chance to foist jerry-built shacks on to an unsuspecting public, generally speaking the speculative builder played an important part in keeping people housed. So did the man who invested money in houses which he built for the purpose of letting. After all, what is wrong with the principle of allowing Sam Jones, whose father left' him £50,000, from investing some of it in a house to let to Bill Smith, who has six children, no house, no capital, and only his wages as a mechanic on which to live? Does the present system of controls give Bill a better chance? Yet officialdom frowns upon “aggregation of property.” What is wrong with letting the capitalist put his capital to work for the good of the community?..