“DOWN AND OUT”

Sun (Auckland), Volume II, Issue 439, 22 August 1928, Page 1

“DOWN AND OUT”

STREAM OF DESTITUTE PEOPLE DRAIN ON HOSPITAL FINANCE In a continuous stream they come filling the waiting rooms, young men with health and strength, women with clinging children, all declaring they are without the means to live. “Down and out,” “no work,” “children starving,” are the complaints of the people who every day apply to the relief department of the Hospital Board for money and food. This year the applicants are more than ever before and the Hospital Board fears that the expenditure on relief will far exceed the estimate of £30,000. The chairman, Mr. William Wallace, suggested that the board might even spend £45,000 this year. Waiting for their turn to explain their poverty this morning were a dozen young men. One or two thin and ill, but the majority able-bodied, and half a dozen women, several of them with little children. The staff of the relief department, which has risen in 10 years from two to six, was taking the particulars and searching over the filing system which goes back for 40 years and contains thousands and thousands of names and records of previous assistance. Every person who has received help from the board almost since it was constituted has a record in one of the pigeon-holes. IMMEDIATE AID

The Relief Committee meets every fortnight, but in cases of urgent necessity grants of money and of milk, bread, fuel and general stores are made immediately. A system of bread coupons by which a necessitous family has the bread delivered to it by the contractor and no one except the relief staff knows anything it has been instituted. Orders for stores are given on grocers in the neighbourhood of the tume. People plainly broken down in health receive an order for medical attendance, and are sent up to Dr. McKelvey at the hospital. Eviry morning he receives from 30 to 60 applicants, and examines them. In the year ended March 31, 1928, about 2,000 people received aid from the board, and the amount of expenditure was £33,632. In 1925-26. 1,500 people were helped, at a cost of £20,683, this being a normal year. In 1826-27 the number rose to 1,600, and the cost -was £28,594. Since March the cost has been about £12,000, and the board's oniy hope that the estimate will not be exceeded is that the spring will bring about more prosperity. The amounts spent on groceries for the city in 1927-28 was £7,161: on bread, £1,212; meat, £7S; milk, £355; and stores for the suburbs, £9,460. In July, which was the worst month on record, 273 new cases were considered, and 132 old ones revised. Rents find cash grants to the city and suburbs amounted to £750, and the amounts for foodstuffs were: Meat, £4; milk, £37; bread, £223: # stores for city, £1,179; stores for out districts, £BIO.