OVERCROWDED SYDNEY

Hokitika Guardian, 15 April 1920, Page 4

OVERCROWDED SYDNEY

HOLIDAY-MAKERS WITHOUT ACCOMMODATION. SYDNEY, March 30. Extraordinary conditions exist in Sydney to-day. Thousands of people who have come crowding into the city for the Show and the Easter holidays are wandering about looking vainly for accommodation. Most of them have some sort of place to lay their heads — but. it is not at all the place they desire, and are prepared to pay for. Enquiries received from all parts of the Commonwealth, and even by wireless from ships approaching Australia, indicate that thousands more are on their way, hoping to spend a pleasant holiday here. As a matter of fact, for a year past it has been difficult to get good accommodation in Sydney, without notice. Any day, casual travellers may be seen flitting desperately round in cabs from place to place, trying to engage a room, and they are generally forced to go to some good hotel in the more distant suburbs, or else take tho very real and ever-present risk of bugs in one of the cheaper hotels in the city. Bugs are now the curse of the lodging-house districts close in and about the city, and most travellers who have been forced, by lack of accommodation, to take “pot luck” somewhere can recount some lively experiences.

But to-day the suburbs as well as the city, are full up, and very many people are turning their faces towards the near by towns ,aiul coming in daily by train. It is not exactly the holiday in tlio city so dear the heart ot the counry dweller at this time, but it is better than returning home disconsolate. Many, however, having had disheartening experiences in bunting for rooms, and then with the tireless bug, have gone home again The cause of the hotel shortage lies in an 'incredibly short-sighted policy which governs the issue of hotel licenses. The city has doubled in size in the last couple of decades ,but the atuhorities, out of deference to the prohibitionists will not grant more hotel licenses ,and high-class residential hotels, as proved over and over again, are a risky proposition without liquor licenses. Therefore ,there is a shortage of hotels.,The same authorities, out of deference to the liquor interests, permit the continued existence of scores and scores of dens which are not hotols at all, but merely drinking shops, where no kind of decent accommodation is provided. The position is non liecoming so acute that action of some sort will be forced upon the city authorities.