These People Are, Desperate

Bay of Plenty Beacon, Volume 12, Issue 55, 14 June 1948, Page 5

These People Are, Desperate

PLIGHT OF SOME OF OUR HOMELESS When a young mother arrived at Whakatane recently to join her husband and three children, who had preceded her from Hawke’s Bay, it would be indelicate to say whether or not she wept when she saw where :she was going to live. She is an uncommonly strong character if she did not feel like weeping.

The whole family packs into a :lwo-roomed bach, with no bathroom, ..no wash house, primitive heating arrangements, no proper cooking faei--lities. In a way, they should be considered fortunate. There are worse cases here. In ■ outlining the cirmumstances, it is .not proposed to publish names, but they are available to anyone who really wants to offer helpful suggestions. These people, citizens of our ■ community, are desperate. There is, for instance, the family with five children camping in a tent and a caravan on the way from Ohope to Ohiwa carrying every drop of water, everything damp with the 1 heavy moisture-laden, spray-soaked winter air. Father of that family would be delighted to get even a bach. He’s afraid of the winter . . . afraid of the mark it might leave on his wife and children. A neighbour uses a tent for a 1 house, too. He also has young children.

Head this way from that" place, and one will see all manner of . shacks housing people, refined, de-cently-bred people, but people who are embittered with the seeming hopelessness of their plight. At one place, eight people are trying to live in two small rooms. Nor can it be charged against them that they are slum dwellers by choice. They’ve been used to much' better conditions, but the whole family shows the strain after-months of crowding, improvising. Most of the people interviewed over there say they are hoping for . State rental houses. Well, there are 108 families •waiting and hoping for State houses at Whakatane. Indications are that most will wait and hope a long time.