Rehab. Housing

Bay of Plenty Beacon, Volume 12, Issue 10, 6 January 1948, Page 5

Rehab. Housing

Non-Co-operation Of Builders Alleged

A suggestion that builders should be made to show that over a given period they had done at least 50 per cent, rehabilitation building for ex-ser-vicemen, was made by Mr T. G. Taylor (Wellington), at the quarterly meeting of the Rehabilitation Council. Mr Taylor said his suggestion was the result of a trip he had recently made in the West Coast area of the South Island, where .he found that builders would not touch rehabilitation housing. He thought one reason might be delays since there was no office of the State Advances Corporation on the Coast and final decisions Were made in Nelson. He had also found that vendors of houses adopted a similarly negative attitude towards returned servicemen and would first ask a prospective buyer if he were a returned soldier. From his- own experience the position regarding both builders and vendors was not so acute in Wellington.

Similar At Wellington That he had noticed similar tendencies around Wellington i-espect-ing the purchase of dwellings, was stated by Mr B. Barrington, member of the Rehabilitation Board. He was sure it was not on account of delays, since delays in Wellington had been largely eradicated. With the system of timber priorities for ex-servicemen operating in the North Island, Mr Taylor’s suggestion should not be necessary in that Island since ex-servicemen would be getting half the timber'for residential building. He would like to see the same system extended to the South Island. In some places builders could not get other w'ork than rehabilitation contracts, and as far as payments were concerned his experience was that these were made promptly. Uncompleted Houses

Mr W. Clarke (Dunedin) said that in Dunedin some builders would undertake State housing contracts and when they were half-finished with these switch to private units, finishing the latter with materials needed for the State houses, with the result that the State houses would lie uncompleted for months. He considered that Where houses were uncompleted the contractors should be asked why. If the answer was that they were waiting for materials they should be. asked what other contracts they had meanwhile done and what materials they had used for them. He also felt there was too much unnecessary alteration work being done. Other speakers concurred in the opinion that materials and labour were being used for alterations and other non-essen-tial purposes Which should be used in housing.

The difficulties were in fields other than timber, considered the Director of Rehabilitation, Mr F. Baker. However the question of extending the timber priority system to the South Island could be looked into, although when the system was introduced for the North Island the position there was vastly different from what it. was in the South. On the West Coast the State Advances Corporation had a resident officer in Greymouth and also an urban valuer and a land valuer. He realised that some delays must arise with correspondence, but for all that there were other places, such as Whangarei, Gisborne and Palmerston North, where fifc'ther decentralisation was needed.