THE HOUSING QUESTION

Dominion, Volume 13, Issue 103, 26 January 1920, Page 5

THE HOUSING QUESTION

LABOUR M.P.'S ADVICE TO WORKERS. Mr. P. Frnser, M.P., in an address at Alexandra Hall last night, said Hie timo had como for the workers to take some strong nclion in connection with the housing question. Ho said that a deputation, .not of the ordinary kind, but a very big deputation of the working women of AVellington, was being arranged, the object being to wait on tho Prime Minister to ask him not to sit in his office, not to stay in his residence —"a very respectable residence, in which three or four working-class families could l)» housed"—but to go down inlu Taranaki Street, into Tory Street, and into some of tho meaner streets of Thorndon, and Rce for himself the hovels in which tho working people had to live. Mr. Fraser donicd that it was impossible to build houses. The Building Trades Federation paid that they were prepared to find the labour, and he would not accept the excuse that houses could not be built because labour could not be obtained. The demand of the Labour Party was that there should be a decent house for every family in Wellington, and in the Dominion. Tho time had como for the workers to tako strong act/on. "I think the timo has conic," he said, "when the workers should ret'uso any longer to pay rent for the hovels in which they have to live."

The opinion was received with enthusiastic applause by Mr. Fraser's audience.