THE CREATION OF SLUMS. King Dick Calls a Halt.

Free Lance, Volume VI, Issue 269, 26 August 1905, Page 6

THE CREATION OF SLUMS. King Dick Calls a Halt.

«< TT|T HAT was good enough for jflt m y father is good enough for me. If my tenants were crowded into a malodorous lane twenty feet wide, why should not my son's tenants be?" This is evidently the reasoning of some of the people who have been objecting with pen and voice to, the very excellent clause added by the Premier to the Wellington City Streets Bill:--"No dwelling-house shall, after the passing of this Act, be erected in the City of Wellington on land fronting; any right-of-way less than 40ft. in width." People who have purchased land in positions affected by the clause will be angry. But what about the people who would have occupied the stuffy houses on the land thus affected ? If the Premier is in the habit of giving Wellington "a slap in the face," this particular slap is the sort of corrective it badly needsi. It is absurd that interested people should advocate the creation of slums on the ground that Wellington has no room in which to expand. It can go as far as it wants towards Mixamar, where there is room for another city as big as Wellington itself. It has plenty of room at the southern end of the city, where, under the Council's existing laws, the builder is able to crowd his works of art together in a manner that would be a disgrace to Whitechapel. • * ■» It is a shame that, in a young country sparsely peopled, air, and light, and liberty should be saleable at a large price, and that any law should help such people, because, forsooth, any amendment to such laws would injure a small band of speculators, while immensely benefiting the whole people of a city that is growing absolutely like a mushroom. People in Wellington pay a good price in thousands of cases for living on areas that in the country would be looked upon as sparse for a prize fowl.

But for any section of the community to get angry because it shall not be possible to go on making matters worse, is evidence that there are a great many selfish people still above ground. In the more crowded areas of Manchester — the most thickly populated city in England — and also in the slums of London, the authorities have destroyed in late years tens of thousands of festering places. Wellington's crowded areas haven't had time to fester to any great extent yet, but, while it is possible for builders to erect dwellings on bits of ground no bigger than a handkerchief, and to prohibit people from getting a breath of fresh air, the evil will grow. • • * It may be that the Government scheme of erecting workers' homes will minimise, m some degree, the evils of overcrowding, and also, by competition, compel a, reduction m rents of privately-owned houses. The rating on improved values has, of course, intensified the trouble, and the coming into life of Greater Wellington has given the suburban builder a legal right to crowd his tenants equally with the city builder • * • * The point to be emphasised, however, is that what has been good good enough up to now is no longer good enough, and that the laws governing building should be more rigidly observed than they have been, and the inspection more drastic, so that future dwellers in New Zealand cities, and particularly m, crowded Wellington, may be able once in a while to' catch a fleeting glimpse of the sun, which, in most cases, shines largely on the unjust to the disadvantage of the other fellow.