HOUSING IN PUKEKOHE

Pukekohe & Waiuku Times, Volume 9, Issue 527, 30 April 1920, Page 2

HOUSING IN PUKEKOHE

When advocating support of the recent loan proposal for the* raising of 1:8-1,000 for various works in tiie borough—happily since carried—we laid emphasis on the fact that the provision of the facilities which the loan money would make practicable would greatly tend to increase ttie number of residents and ratepayers in the borough, thereby enabling the bu.'den to be spread over a greater number of ratepayers. With precisely the same object in view, plus other aims, we now repeat our advocacy of a municipal housing scheme. Under" the Housing Act a local body has power to raise money I'or the building of dwellinghouses, charging the same to the tenants and prospective owners —not to the ratepayers. We are given to understand that at the present time the Council could obtain an option over two and a-half acres of land suitable for residential purposes and situated less than one-third of a mile from the Pukekohe luilway station. On such a property ten houses could be erected on quarteracre sections, and being built all together in the one area the construction should be done at a lower Kist lhan if building single houses ;it dilleient places in the borough, liouuhly speaking each householder would be contributing approximately •; I per year in i'ates to the revenue of the borough; there would be ten more families trading in the town ami therefore every local tradesmen and institution would benefit more or less. As the whH» of the burden (except perhaps a nominal sum for the execution of- legal formalities) would fall on the tenant puri.hasi'is, and not on the ratepayers,

the argument in favour of such a scheme is practically unassailable. The shortage of houses in Pukekohe is too painfully apparent to need stressing, and if the councillors will take this matter up energetically and accomplish something definite on the lines suggested they will have earned the gratitude of houseless workers and their families, and have done s&mething for the benefit of the borough the reality of which will be unquestionable, even by their most bitter opponents. Provided the first application in Pukekohe of the Housing Act proved a success—and we have little doubt on that pointfurther batches of dwellings could be similarly erected from time to time until the acute shortage was overcome.