HUNTING FOR HOME

Southland Times, Issue 18846, 11 June 1920, Page 2

HUNTING FOR HOME

MARRIED AND ENCUMBERED. IS THERE NO REMEDY? The house hunger in Auckland (says the Star) has gone past the stage of merely wanting a place and is quickly coming to a I'isition where the need is very real and the prospects of filling the void practically hopeless. ‘The matter of a house or two for sale docs not help the position at all,” said a gentleman this morning. ‘‘The only practical remedy is to have more houses. Building is very expensive, materials arc hard to get, and many people who buy building sites in the suburbs do so with the idea in the hack of their minds that when the trams go further out they will make money by re-selling. A THREE-GUINEA SUITE. The e-xperiencc of many people is that the great anomaly of this whole business of wanting a homo lies in the fact that very many married people are living today in the only quarters they can get—flats more or less comfortable, rooms more or less satisfactory, or lodgings that leave a great deal to be desired in the matter of home comfort. And many of these places cost a weekly fee that makes the rent of a decent house four years ago look very small . For instance, a couple were living in a flat of three small rooms, rather well furnished as flats go, but without a fireplace, with a common bathroom and a five-by-six kitchenette that contained simple cooking utensils, a gas range, scullery and small food-safe. The weekly charge was three guineas. The hearing was by radiator, the tenants paid for electricity for lights and heat, anil the gas range had its own shilling-in-the-slot meter. A thrcc-roomcd flat is quite large, excepting in the expensive “residential suites,” the majority of ordinary flats being of two rooms, while many apartments consist of a bed silting-drawing-li ving-room and a gas ring or other simple cooking “convenience.” Many of the two roomed flats may he obtained for thirty shillings a week or perhaps a few shillings more, quite a large number run into two pounds or guineas, while three guineas is rather an outside figure. Mostly (he price depends on the locality, "nice” meaning an extra rental.

In the great majority of cases the young married couple have it child and the kiddie bars them from many a shelter. The ban upon children is not altogether unaah moils, and although many will have nothing to do with the couple with a family, even if said family is one small j-oungster, a fair proportion of Auckland’s landladies do not mind the little ones. UNSUITABLE QUARTERS. Another aspect of the housing question is the number of couples who live in unsuitable quarters, often without a fire in these days of cold weather and forbidden radiators, while they cannot see their way to go into more costly quarters. Other confidants expressed their opinion that this lack of comfort in many apartments had a decided influence on married people. It tended, they said, towards the discouragement of children, and it influenced people who perhaps had a liking for good home conditions to become well-known figures in the restaurants, on the streets, and in the places of entertainment. Speaking of the whole question of accommodation from a more official point of view, tin informant could see no clear pathway out of the difficulty. He was aware, he said, that people were finding it :i hard matter to gel accommodation, and very often it was impossible for them to get suitable quarters, but he submitted that the same thing had been in existence ail over the world. Sydney lie instanced as a city that had been passing through this phase for years. It was a city or “flatters” he thought, where real homes were not present in anything like a fair proportion of lives, "VeS houses are hard to get,” he said thoughtfully. “But it seems to me a phase of progress, this trouble over accommodation. If there were five hundred more houses to-morrow there would still be the dweller in the flat or the single room. What can we do? And there the question rests.”