Council’s Hostel For Massey University

Press, Volume CVI, Issue 31079, 7 June 1966, Page 12

Council’s Hostel For Massey University

By a very small majority in a minority poll ratepayers In Palmerston North have authorised their city council to raise a loan of £90,000 to pay a fifth of the cost of building a hostel for Massey University students. The Government will provide the other £360,000. The objectors to the loan argued that this was not the city’s business and that the full cost should be borne by national funds. In any case, they said, the students who would use the hostel would come from outside the city. The dispute this proposal has aroused in Palmerston North involves considerations of interest to all university cities, whether or hot a local authority begins a hostel project. Private student accommodation tends to be at least modest, and often poor. Even then it adds to the general demand for living space. Hostels may deprive private landlords of tenants. They may relieve other tenants of higher rents. Palmerston North benefits in many ways from the proximity of Massey University, which contributes to the progress, the population, and the business turnover of the city. The university recently handed over £50,000 to the city for its sewage treatment scheme.

The council has initiated something that will help to prevent a recurrence in Palmerston North of the undesirable housing for students which has afflicted older university cities. Christchurch is fortunate that the establishment of the Ilam campus has now stimu-

lated a programme of hostel building. In Palmerston North the city council may be the only organisation large enough to sponsor the building of a hostel By tackling the job itself, the city does not wait on anyone else’s readiness to provide student accommodation. Individual students may be transitory; as a body they are permanent residents, for Palmerston North, like other cities, now regards the university as an essential part of itself. Those who voted in favour of the loan have shown the greater foresight. When the hostel has been built and is paying its way the proportion of objectors will surely dwindle. It will then be obvious that, by improving its university, the city has improved itself.