PREPAREDNESS

Evening Star, Issue 23695, 1 October 1940, Page 3

PREPAREDNESS

HOUSING A FACTOR SYSTEMATIC PLANNING SUGGESTED USE OF AVAILABLE FACILITIES It is inevitable that war should stimulate certain trades at the expense of others. It is inevitable also that wherever tins is done there should be a certain amount of confusion regarding housing facilities for the workers engaged. In a small country like this New Zealand, where practically all the main centres are so situated as to engage in most branches of industry, this confusion takes only a temporary aspect. It may be seen in the necessity for building barracks for carpenters engaged in building military camps, as at Burnham. Or it may be got over by employing additional transport, as was done in the construction of tho Taieri airport. But such developments as the rapid expansion planned for the defence programme of tho United States constitute a real problem in this respect. Developmental work there may cover a long period of years. A suggested plan of procedure through which existing housing facilities and housing production facilities may most .quickly and effectively be mobilised to meet needt occasioned by the, national preparedness programme of the U.S.A. has been submitted to the National Defence Commission by the National Association of Real Estate Boards, ANTICIPATING NEEDS. Tho plan includes a systematic examination of local housing conditions in advance of need, as soon as tho need can ho foreseen, by local business groups concerned with housing, to ascertain the extent of existing facilities and how they might best bo used. Thus may be determined immediately the number of added units that should be provided through construction. It includes also a plan to make a complete list of existing rental housing facilities available, and a plan for the encouragement of building operations in the needed amounts whore new construction is indicated. It is proposed that where tho defence programme has a long-range aspect, as, for example, in ship building, quite certain to continue actively for some years, that the aim as to housing be durable and permanent homes for workers with families, rather than life in barracks or in temporary construction. Recognising that the risk in such home ownership would bo the possible cessation of the defence work in question, either through its completion or through change in Government plans, it is proposed that insurance to cover this extra hazard of unemployment be incorporated in the worker’s monthly payments on his home. This payment, under conditions that could readily bo set up, using existing private construction facilities and existing financing machinery, should not need to bo higher than the worker would otherwise bo paying for rent, the association points out.