SUDDEN INTEREST?

Dominion, Volume 37, Issue 197, 18 May 1944, Page 3

SUDDEN INTEREST?

Cr. Appleton Replies To His Opponent

SLUM CLEARANCE ISSUE

“No level-headed voter will be duped by my opponent's shedding of ‘election tears' over the slum areas.” said Cr. Will Appleton, Citizens’ candidate for the Wellington mayoralty at Cashmere (Khanilaliah) and Northland last night. “He declares the problem to be 40 years old, ignoring that without old houses there is no slum problem. But what has he been doing all this time? It has taken the prospect of another £750 a year to bring him into tiie £2OOO a year class, to stimulate his interest in slums, buses, trams, tracks, tepid baths, roads and the like.” Why did Mr. Roberts not offer his services as a councillor years ago to give his advice and publicise his still undisclosed remedy for the slum problem? Perhaps the answer was that he did not believe in honorary community service. Now he .blossomed forth wanting to pin notices of owners’ names on slum houses. Would tliey not have carried as much weight years ago under his signautre as president of the New Zealand Labour Party? For years at the Trades Hall he had the slum problem all round him, but no interest then. He had better fish to fry. When the Labour Government was in its heyday of State house building did Mr. Roberts wave his big stick at them and say “No State houses to anyone till these slum dwellers are accommodated” Not him! But the berated Citizens’ Council did press the Labour Government for a Slum Clearance Bill, without success, and anyone without Mr. Roberts’s colossal ignorance of civic affairs knew the council to be powerless without legislative authority. The Coates Government knew that when, in its dying stages, it empowered 1 , by Act, the housing surveys. The present Government after nine years had still to give the finishing touches to this legislation by bringing down a Slum Clearance Bill.

Cr. Appleton said he had been struck by the advertisement that Mr. Roberts would speak in the Town Hall tonight while in the concert chamber the Wellington Housing and Accommodation Committee had its meeting. In fact, the Salvation Army had the Town Hall for tonight. The inference was obvious, and he was not going to be tricked) into a debate with Mr. Roberts and his unwanted (except when it suited) Communist satellite, Dr. Silverstone, before a purely Labour-Communist audience. His housing policy had been well-stated in the Press, as well as the fact that without legislative authority the council could not clear the slums. It could order demolition and condemnation of houses, but even Mr. Roberts had not yet reached the stage where he could . intimidate the courts into issuing orders to eject persons who had no places to go .. To a Cashmere question, Cr. Appleton said that if the Khandallah Progressive Association favoured shifting the city bus terminus from Bowen Street to Lambton Quay he would follow his usual practice of supporting the proposals of such associations.

Cr. W. H. Stevens said the Citizens’ Housing and Accommodation Committee pamphlet cleverly dramatized housing conditions in Wellington, depicted pensioners’ homes in Christchurch, and tried to capitalize on the Government’s present inability to provide homes for returned men. But it did not even admit that Christchurch and Auckland also had bad slums. Since the 1937 housing survey the council had advanced finance for 109 homes (war temporarily stopped activities) and with eased by-laws, which included safety provisions, enabled 500 additional dwelling units to be provided by conversion of wooden buildings into flats. The council regularly controlled occupancy of undesirable quarters, but frequently found itself unable to exercise its full Health Act powers without alternative accommodation being available. Magistrates held this view. He had fully informed the housing committee of his views, to be read at tonight’s meeting.

Mr, A. M. Pope, at Island Bay. emphasized that the present council had wisely reserved ample funds to overtake maintenance deferred through lack of labour and materials. He would press for maintenance arrears being wiped off first, as neglect meant fresh capital expenditure. The council had the money to provide work on maintenance for large numbers who would soon need it.