IMPROVED LIVING CONDITIONS

Dominion, Volume 32, Issue 151, 22 March 1939, Page 6

IMPROVED LIVING CONDITIONS

Flats And Apartment

Houses STANDARD BYLAWS Far-Reaching Provisions Proposed By Telegraph—Press Assoclattou. CHRISTCHURCH. Mar. 21. Far-reaching provisions designed to improve living conditions in flats, apartment houses, tenements and similar dwelling places are outlined in draft proposals for the standard bylaws covering such buildings. Local authorities in Christchurch have received copies of the draft from the New Zealand Standards Institute.

The proposals will be studied by the local authorities interested, commented on and finally issued in complete form. Then the local authorities will be enabled to enforce them as compulsory bylaws. At the moment, it is emphasized, they are merely in draft form and are not to be acted on by local authorities. The proposals apply in the majority of cases not only to buildings yet to be erected but to those already in use as flats, apartments or tenements.

The most important provisions are: Minimum adequate ventilation and lighting for all rooms, whether livingrooms, bedrooms or lavatories. Minimum heights for rooms and minimum floor space and air space. Prohibition of the use of bedrooms for cooking food. Compulsory provision in all single family dwelling units of a living-room, a bedroom, bathroom, kitchenette and lavatory. Enforcement of fireproof construction in new buildings such as hotels, hostels, lodging houses, flats or apartment houses. Provision of accommodation tor motor-cars, back court space and clean surroundings. Licensing of all lodging houses amt restrictions on the number to be lodged in them. The preamble to the draft makes it plain that the bylaws are intended to apply to existing as well as future flats and apartments. The interpretation clauses state at the outset that ‘ apatiment,” “tenement.” and “flat," shah mean portion of a building or. room ot suite of rooms which is occupied or is intended or designed to be occupied by one family for living and sleeping purposes. and forms part of an apartment building. “Apartment building” and “tenement building” will mean any building which is designed, built, rented, leased, let or hired to be occupied, or which is occupied as a house of residence for two or more families living independently of.each other or without common right to the use of entiances, passages, stairways or yards, and having proper facilities for cooking meals in each apartment or proper facilities for tlie preparing and partaking of meals. It is also made clear that dwelling bouse” means not only a dwelling m the commonly-accepted sense, but any building or part of it used, constructed or intended or adapted to be used wholly or principally for residential purposes or human habitation. “Family" will mean one person living alone or a group of two or more living together “whether related to each other by birth or not.”