SLUM CLEARANCE

Dominion, Volume 37, Issue 195, 16 May 1944, Page 6

SLUM CLEARANCE

Council Powerless Without State Legislation

CR. APPLETON REPLIES TO

OPPONENT

“My opponent is eloquent about the obvious difficulties which neither civic nor national governments can avoid in wartime, but he is strangely silent on how he would have avoided them,” said Cr. Will Appleton, Citizens’ candidate for the’ Wellington mayoralty, at Ngaio and Island Bay last night. If Mr. Roberts could have- given Wellington unlimited transport, housing, water, and the like, over the past few years, he could have done the same for New Zealand. Everyone else had only been able to do the best with what they had. Mr. H. L. Cummings, Progressive Association chairman, who presided at Ngaio, recalled Mr. Appleton's earlier membership of the Onslow Borough Council, and what the district owed to him, and other far-sighted men, in bringing about amalgamation with the city. The opposition, said Cr. Appleton, was making a real feast of the 1935 incident of a woman living with four children in a shack at the rear of a Taranaki Street house. They did not mention the Labour preponderance on the then council health committee, or the fact that this woman s relatives lived in the house itself but kept boarders in it. They did not say the shack was subsequently vacant for several years, but was only recently let, unknown to the council, to a man only. The council could not put the present occupant on the street. It, did obtain a demolition order for a shed wherein a man, wife and child were living, but three prosecutions, with fines totalling £7, did not get them out or find them another home, despite attempts to do so. There was another case where a closing order was issued for premises in the trustee ownership of the Public Trustee, who would not carry out repairs. The occupier was fined, but applied to the Minister of'Justice for a remission of the penalty with, he understood, success. Occupiers of poor type houses usually could not afford the economic rents of better houses. Therefore, special means must be provided to rehouse them before slum dwellings could be cleared. ■ Means must be found to enable them to bridge the gap between what a new house would cost a week and vkhat they could pay. from 1919 to 1934, £38,000,000 was spent in .England on assisted house building, empowered by Acts, and the deficiency was £8,000,000, of which the Government found two-thirds and the municipalities one-third.

New Zealand had no such legislation. Municipalities had no power to let property for less than a fair rental based on valuation, or to sell houses for less than provided under the Municipal Corporation Act, whereby the cost had to be recovered in 30 years, or for wooden houses in less.

The only authority in New Zealand which could carry out slum clearance was the Government, but it had not cleared any slum areas yet. The houses it did build were carefully let to those able to pay the required rental. A Slum Clearance Bill was brought forward by the late Hon. T. Armstrong, but was dropped. The city council had several times offered, the Government its assistance in framing suitable legislation, and was anxious to have Te Aro flat cleaned up. It had unsuccessfully asked for a copy of the Bill, to be told that as yet it was only a> sketch measure. Without this legislation, which Mr. Roberts, in his knowledge of civic administration, blissfully' ignored, the council wag next to powerless. Such legislation would require to give the council power to move slum dwellers to new homes erected for them, and to set out the basis on which rentals were to be reduced.

Dealing with Ngaio, Mr. Appleton said that facts showed the council not to be asleep’. Money for widening and improving Cockayne Road was included in the special works loan proposal, the work of widening the gorge road was under way, and he would press with all his power for the new arterial highway, linking Wadestown with Ngaio. The Prime Minister, Mr. Fraser, was sympathetic to this proposal. *- « *

Three points concerning the tramways system made by a Labour candidate, Mr; P. A. Hansen, who is tramways’ union secretary, were dealt with by Cr. W. H. Stevens at Island Bay last night. What did’ Mr.'Hansen mean by a “complete overhaul of timetables”? he asked. The only one that could take place was the pulling-out of cars because it. was certain through, staff shortages .that none could be put in, or a combination of pulling-out and rearranging timetables to suit tatter the union members. Such an overhaul would probably mean allowing longer times for trips which would reduce the number available. That type of overhaul would ill-suit the public. Next was “regrouping.” This was hard to understand as each district was given, so far as could be arranged, its share of old and modern trams. The third was “a review of Stopping places.” The union had pressed for. a reduction. There were arguments for and against this, and the management would have been pleased to reduce the number had the time been opportune. No tram-user would thank the council fpr reducing the number of stopping places on his route. The tramways committee was always glad to consider the union’s representations, and no doubt it would have co-operative proposals for the most efficient running when more staff was available and, as a natural consequence, more trams could be put on the rails. « * * .

Cr. B. J. Todd, at Ngaio. favoured energetic steps being taken concerning) the exemption of Government propertir. from rates. In the year 1942-43 the loss in the general rate through the Crown paving special rates only was £U,097, and the loss in rates through Crown properties being exempt was £48.103. The total made 9 per cent, of the total rates. Areas of city land capable of subdivision were now practically exhausted and further acquisition by the Crown for normal purposes of the State would mean a reduction in the unimproved value available for general rating.