Urgent Need For Housing

Bay of Plenty Beacon, Volume 12, Issue 56, 16 June 1948, Page 5

Urgent Need For Housing

BOROUGH COUNCIL’S STAFF PROBLEM Borough services are hanging on the housing question just now, according to reports of the Borough foreman-engineer, Mr S. W. Henderson, and electrical engineer, Mr F. W. Lysaght, to Monday night’s meeting of the Whakatane Borough Council. The Council referred the matter to the finance committee to try to figure out an answer to the staff accommodation problem. “The thing is absolutely desperate,” said Mr Lysaght, electrical engineer, in discussing staff problems and housing. He said if the Borough wanted staff—and it needed staff desperately—something would have to be done about housing. He suggested the Borough get busy and build a house of some sort, even a temporary bach. Cr J. Creeke suggested the only thing to do was to try to get some of the disused Army huts from Waiouru. Mr Lysaght said he wanted action, even if the Borough staff had to “get stuck into it” to do the job themselves. Cr W. Sullivan agreed something must be done. The works committee had decided to get in touch with the War Assets Realisation Board with a view to acquiring huts as transit accommodation. It was impossible to get a tradesman into the town today without a promise of a house. That in itself made the building proposition tougher. The finance committee meets on Monday night to consider the problem and will try to get some satisfaction from the War Assets Realisation Board as well as considering all the other possibilities.