BAY OF PLENTY BEACON Published Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays. MONDAY, JULY 11, 1949 STATE HOUSES

Bay of Plenty Beacon, Volume 14, Issue 10, 11 July 1949, Page 4

BAY OF PLENTY BEACON Published Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays. MONDAY, JULY 11, 1949 STATE HOUSES

If there were any doubt that Whakatane needs a State housing allocation committee, that doubt should be dispelled by the stories from house-hunters we have published today. Some of those stories do not make pleasant reading. It was not intended that they should do so.

But they are absolutely true, and can be proved in every detail.

And we think they make it more than ever obvious .that, the present “system” of allocating houses here is not good enough.

We also think there is not nearly enough active public interest in Whakatane’s No. 1 problem. There is too much of a tendency amongst those who are comfortably housed themselves not to care a hoot whether somebody else’s children shelter in a cave or rot on a garbage heap.

To anyone who has taken the trouble to investigate the position here it is amazing that the whole town is not screaming with united voice for more houses and for fairer allocations.

Today we have quoted cases, some of them harrowing cases, that the Tauranga bureaucrats have not bothered to investigate.

Is it good enough? And what, if anything,- does Whakatane intend to do about it?

Is there one responsible body or citizen sufficiently interested in the plight of the homeless to take up the challenge to try to organise some, relief? The first thing we need is our own allocation committee.

And the first body to discuss that proposition was the Chamber of Commerce, which handed it over to its executive “for investigaiton.” Maybe this thing is a bit hot to handle. Maybe the men who got appointed to such a committee would find they had anything but an easy job. Maybe the officials who handle our destinies from Tauranga haven’t a simple task, either.

But does it matter in a case like this if the task to be done is not pleasant, so long as the need is urgent? Surely there are a few men and women in this community with sufficient interest in their fellows’ misfortunes to take on the task of sitting on an allocation committee, even at the risk of some personal unpopularity? We think this thing has to be tackled. And we want the world to know what we think. Further, we don’t care who doesn’t like our opinion. It is an honest-opinion, formed on evidence, honestly held and honestly expressed. We hope someone will have the courage to take practical steps to back us up in this campaign for better treatment for the homeless in our midst.