CONDEMNED H0USE5. Re=erected in the Suburbs.

Free Lance, Volume VI, Issue 282, 25 November 1905, Page 6

CONDEMNED HOUSES. Re=erected in the Suburbs.

MR. T. M. Wilford warned thcj ratepayers of Eastbourne the other day about living in houses that had been condemned In the city as unfit for human habitation, but which had been re-erecter] in their borough. He mentioned the case of a house in which a coasumptive had died. The house was condemned, re-erected, and two people subsequently died of consumption at intervals in that houso. And nobody in gaol about it. » * • The City Council knows, as well as Mr. Wilford knows, that not only at Eastbourne, but at Kilbirnie, Berhampore, Island Bay, Karon, and elsewhere within a short distance of the city these condemned houses have been re-erected, and that the owners of them demand, expect, and receive rentals for them, the said rentals being as large as would be demanded for new houses. Greed on the one hand, and the worst kind of neglect on the other. • • • If a house is condemned in Torystreet, it is unfit for habitation when it gets to Kilbirnie, even though it ia patched and plastered and paper ed and painted to look like a ne^ house. Some of the heaps of filthy timber dumped on allotments u> the suburbs are, in themselves, enough to justify prosecution of th-5 greedy owners, but, apparently, the Council is too busy electioneering vO waste a thought on the spread rf disease, and the many evils that are not only not discouraged, but whicli are in no way interfered with • • • The only friend the inhabitants of houses of this class have is the Wellington wind, and the average person, looking for a house generally prefers to find a calm spot where that friend has no chance to blovr the germs away. That the cas« mentioned by Mr. Wilford is by no means isolated will be endorsed by Dr. Valmtine, who has many times emphasised the danger to successive tenants of a house that has sheltered a diseased person. Every house condemned as unfit for habitation should be burnt. The Corporation can better afford to compensate greedy owners than allow the said owners to trifle with the lives of citizens. If the Corporation, did its duty, it would burn to-morrow several score houses that are a disgrace to owners, a menace to tenants, and a grave reflection, on the humanity of the Council.