Slums in Auckland

Sun (Auckland), Volume 1, Issue 111, 1 August 1927, Page 8

Slums in Auckland

Neglected Areas of City

MUNICIPAL administrators may find unpalatable the charge that there are slums in Auckland, but it has to be faced. The indictment has been strengthened by the observations of the Hon. G. J. Anderson, whose recent inspections forced him to the conclusion that objectionable conditions exist.

rpHE neglect of callous landlords is directly responsible for the hovels of the back-alleys in the Freeman’s Bay district. But an indirect responsibility rests on the Auckland City Council. Municipal service extends only spasmodically to the squalid lanes of slumdom. Killowen Place, Duke Street, Day

Street, Valentine Lane —-these are some of the many narrow streets which the casual visitor must find a disagreeable contrast to the clean concrete roads of other parts of the city. It would seem that the authorities assume no responsibility for the maintenance of the alleys of Freeman’s Bay. Many of them, traversing hillsides are innocent of watertables. Rain has cut their surface into gaping channels, and water-borne garbage is carried from one section to another, or on to the road. PAVED WITH ASHES All the permanent paving that some streets are given is ashes, bones, or

broken brick. The result is mud. Whitson Terrace, off Howe Street, might not be paved at all. Ruts in the deep grass lend it a rural aspect. While the City Councils of recent years are responsible for the present road conditions, the blame for the crowded hovels and the narrow lanes belongs to an earlier generation of administrators. How any civic authority could permit such subdivision, with choked approaches strangling any possibility of decent development, is beyond the imagination now. The oppressive alleys might have seemed reasonable 40 years ago, but they have no place in any scheme of to-day. CHEAP DWELLINGS Because they are relatively cheap, in a city of notoriously high rents, the homes that line the slum-lanes fill some sort of a community need. In most cases, moreover, the dwellers in them keep the houses clean. Unable to afford better, they have no remedy for the wretched structural condition of their homes. They know that improvements would be followed by higher rents. One woman pays 12s a week for a hovel that is without a fireplace. There is a stove, but its chimney is gone. She keeps the place scrupulously clean. Among the landlords who overlook their responsibilities are powerful companies, and wealthy individuals, as well as small men. In a street in Newton two houses that lean toward each other, at a rakish angle, are owned by a trading company. Their exteriors are green with slime, and the rent is 10 a week for each. One is let to a woman who knows better than to live in it. Instead she has furnished it—possibly with merchandise purchased oil the time-payment plan from the trading concern aforesaid —and sub-lets it at 22s 6d a week. RENTS PAY INTEREST In many cases land at present occupied by mean dwellings is held by organisations that later intend to use it for factory sites. Rather than evict the tenants prematurely they are allowing them to remain until the property is wanted, and in the meantime the rents help to pay the interest on the capital invested. At the same time there would appear to be something wrong with a civic system which allows landlords to draw rents from houses that seem to be on the verge of collapse. Countless cottages are tilted, one way or the other, or sag in the middle. Broken fences and anaemic verandahs contribute to their drab appearance.