DO WE NEED OUR OWN STATE HOUSE ALLOCATION COMMITTEE? EVIDENCE SAYS YES-RIGHT NOW

Bay of Plenty Beacon, Volume 14, Issue 10, 11 July 1949, Page 5

DO WE NEED OUR OWN STATE HOUSE ALLOCATION COMMITTEE? EVIDENCE SAYS YES-RIGHT NOW

Whakatane’s Homeless

That there is widespread dissatisfaction with the system of State rental house allocations so far as Whakatane is concerned is abundantly apparent from cases that have been brought to the Beacon’s notice since it was first suggested a while ago that this district needs its own allocation committee.

Though it is obviously impossible i;o publish the names of the people who have given us the stories printed hereunder, they are people whose integrity is beyond doubt. They allege that a number of truly desperate cases have been shelved, and that some of the allocations that Lave been made are, to say the least, difficult to understand. Four Years “Urgent”

Some indication of the workings ■of the present system of allocation from Tauranga can be gained from the experience of this young exserviceman: He is married with two young children and lives in a small one roomed bach. He has had an application in for a State house for four years and writes to the Department at least once a week. His conditions have been inspected by a State Advances official who was horrified at them and promised to make his application urgent. At one time this young couple were advised by 'one officer of the Corporation to live apart, as this would help their application. They lived apart for six months, but nothing happened. Their application lias been acknowledged several times and when the second child was born they were advised that their application had been altered accordingly and changed for a larger house.

Yet, about a month ‘ago they received a letter from the Manager -of the State Advances Corporation in Wellington, inquiring about the application and stating that as far as he was concerned no application was made!

Since this couple made application two cases where i childless married couples have received two-bedroomed State houses are known.

In spite of two medical certificates and representations from various bodies who have been appalled at this man’s plight, he has never had a visit from the Corporation’s investigating officer, though he was blandly told at Tauranga that that official had “had a look at the place from outside and thought it was terrible.”

This appears to refute the statement in many of the letters from the Corporation pointing out that the Department is in touch with the housing situation at Whakatane. Hell of the Homeless • Mecca of holiday makers, hell of the homeless, Ohope contains some appalling cases of housing inadequacy, but without its baches the •position in general would be infinitely worse than it is. Here is a typical case: The. shack is just a. shell. Unlined, with no conveniences and no bathroom, it houses five people. The roof leaks and the wind is barely stopped by the wall, through which daylight can be seen in the many cracks. Water can be heated only on a stove, while the copper and washing tubs are outside, so that no washing can be done when it is wet.

But they were convinced that, had the circumstances of all of these people been properly, in-

When washing is being done water has to be hauled up from a well and carried to the copper for heating. Inside all the walls rise only seven feet, leaving gaps at the top. There are no doors, only curtains, and there is no privacy. Only two rooms have electric lighting. The two bedrooms are so small that only one person can change in them at a time. One of the occupants sleeps in a shed which is as bad as the house in the winter. This family have lived under these conditions for four years, have had an application in for a State house for two and a half years, and have never had a visit from a State Adavnces officer. Not Bad Enough? Also at Ohope lives a man in desperately poor health, with a wife and four children, crowded into a cottage with only two small bedrooms, big enough to take one bed each. The parents sleep on a porch, which also takes the youngest child’s cot. There is a kitchen—without a window, and with a small Dover stove its only cooking facility. There is no hot v/ater, but

vestigated, and had they been accorded the priority that seems to be their due, a great deal of suffering might have been alleviated.

there is a copper out in the open, with a pair of tubs partly under cover.

Incidentally, in the last allocations another family with four children, who had been living under difficult but much better conditions than these moved into a State house. The man with the medical certificates naturally wants to know why the other family got preference. Took The Leavings Still, “its an ill wind . . . .” The cottage the other family left saved the, sanity of the parents of five children who had existed for over 12 months in two rooms at Ohope. They took over gratefully, though their own conditions, constantly before the authorities, had not apparently impressed .anyone particularly.

The shack they left had no water except from a soak-hole on top of the cliff that overhung it. It had no spoutings, appallingly primitive conveniences, and it leaked. How Is It Done? Nearly all these people asked, helplessly, “How is it done? People are getting houses allocated to them, and in some cases leaving quite fair places. How is it done?” Our investigators had to confess it had them whacked.