BAY OF PLENTY BEACON Published Tuesdays and Fridays. TUESDAY, MAY 25, 1948 THE HOUSING POSITION

Bay of Plenty Beacon, Volume 12, Issue 49, 25 May 1948, Page 4

BAY OF PLENTY BEACON Published Tuesdays and Fridays. TUESDAY, MAY 25, 1948 THE HOUSING POSITION

Whakatane seems to have a particularly acute housing problem. This is not a large town, but at the present time there are 108 families living in temporary accommodation and waiting for State rental houses. Of those 108, 40 are the families of returned servicemen, on a fiftyfifty priority with civilians (which include home servicemen), through Rehabilitation.

Material is on the sites for 8 new units. Another twelve units are to be started when those eight are completed. As is pointed out by Mr W. Sullivan M.P., what is needed throughout New Zealand is more houses quicker. He says the answer is to overhaul the supply position and do something about reducing costs by an overhaul of taxation. There does seem to be evidence that Mr Semple has tried to find additional supplies of materials, but so far the results of his efforts do not seem to have had any important effect on building speed. There seems no evidence of any present intention on the part of the Government to reduce costs in the way suggested by Mr Sullivan.

So far as Whakatane is concerned, the number of State houses here, 113 built and let since 1937, is woefully inadequate to cope with the town’s rapid expansion. The few projected will not have much effect on the position generally. There seems to be no such thing as a privately-owned house available for letting to a family with young children. Therefore, the house hunter here would appear to have to wait for a State house, which may—and, on the figures, in many cases will—take years, or allow desperation to drive him to build at ruinously high rates. As Mr Sullivan has pointed out, present-day building costs are beyond the means of wage and salary earners. Indeed, that could be safely said of presentday costs of most things. Ohope, oft-publicised beauty spot and health resort, is becoming a slum of Whakatane. While those baches might be admirable for summer week-ends, many are definitely not suitable for all-year-round habitation. Some are certainly p're judical to the health of the people who occupy them in winter. Ohope, holiday resort, is becoming a sort of purgatory for the ' house-hunter, a halfway stop between the hell of complete homefessness and the doubtful heaven of State house tenancy. People, decently-bred citizens of what used to .be “God’s own country,” are living in appalling conditions under our very noses, and there seems to be nothing in the way of a concerted move by the citizens of this community to get anything done about it. Possibly the first move should be the organisation of the homeless themselves into some sort of an association to bring the problem more forcibly-to the attention of the rest of the community and ultimately of the Government.