HOMELESS FAMILIES

Opotiki News, Volume II, Issue 136, 20 January 1939, Page 4

HOMELESS FAMILIES

HOUSING SHORTAGE MOTORIST’S REFLECTIONS Much has been heard of the housing shortage in Taranaki but the number of homeless people in other districts amazed a Stratford man who return- / ed recently from a holiday trip. These people were not homeless because of inability to pay rent but because of .inability to. find anything to pay rent for. *

The Stratford man stayed at- camp sites at some; places and in hotels at others. At the same sites he found as many as a dozen families living permanently in tents or caravans owing to the housing shortage. At some of tho hotels he found married .'people as permanent boarders and at others was told of the housing difficulty. Tauranga. was quoted as one example. At a • privately owned campsite—there was no municipal camp—there were two sections, one reserved for permanent campers and one for casuals. The permanent section Avas full and in most cases the families had erected their tents in Public Works fashion with wooden walls and in one case a. wooden floor. The people in the permanent section were in good circumstances and able, to pay even high rents but had been unable to get houses. Some had been in the camp for months. Even in a comparatively small place like Whakatane three families lived* at ( tlie camp site. One man,* appointed as domains caretaker, had come to Whakatane from Christchurch and after three months’ boarding and ineffectual house hunting lie had bought a caravan built on a lorry chassis and erected a tent beside it as a kitchen.