The Taihape Daily Times. AND WAIMARINO ADVOCATE SATURDAY, JUNE 1, 1918. HOUSELESS WOMEN AND CHILDREN.

Taihape Daily Times, 1 June 1918, Page 4

The Taihape Daily Times. AND WAIMARINO ADVOCATE

SATURDAY, JUNE 1, 1918. HOUSELESS WOMEN AND CHILDREN.

(With which is Incorporated The Taihape Post and YvaTnmtlrao News)..

In Thursday’s issue of this journal there was a ddmning indictment from “A Mother of Seven” against this town and against those who profess to have the interest of women and children most in their care. We are almost daily appealed to for houses m which families may lay their heads, but this week an exceptional case of hardship came our way. A man had taken work in the town and had come with his wife and children from a place some two hundred miles away only to find that he could get neither house or rooms in which to put his family, and so he wandered about the streets searching for a day or two and then deciedd that Taihape was not a place for married men. Wherever he went it was the same story, “cannot take in children,’ and so the man had' no other course but to return from whence he came or move on to where a more human' community would find shelter for his children. Veriily, “the foxes have holes and the fowls of the air nests, but the son of man hath not where to lie his head” in Taihape. We 1 build good weather-proof houses for our motor cars, warm kennels for our dogs; we hesitate about going to bed before satisfying ourselves that the cat has somewhere to sleep in comfort; we build houses for our fowls, stables for our horses, but we do not care a tinker’s cursory observation what happens to our men, their wives, and their small children. We sickeningly prate about the mother with a large family being the greatest asset to the Empire, and yet we turn the mothers and children out into the streets at this time of the year without the slightest '"Compunction; we have no care what happens to them. ‘Mother of Seven” put her case against the people of Taihape so admirably, forcefully, and convincingly, that we cannot improve upon it. There it is, a standing reproach to the whole community, and what are we going to do about it? Our Parliament and Government have set up boards and commissions ad nauseum to labour for efficiency in everything but the housing of women and children; these are dragged about the country until a shelter is found, but in all probability they cannot stay there because there is no work for the man. We can truthfully state that not a day passes but inquiries come to our office for houses or rooms. Rents have gone up until we would be ashamed to further increase them ,as they are already far higher than in any other provincial centre in the Dominion. We have vacant sections galore in the borough; we want ratepayers to provide the wherewithal to improve our "streets; are there none amongst us capable of evolving a progressive scheme who will impress upon the people that something must be done? We have a borough of 1230 acres with about 440 houses in it, and only about 320 rate, payers, that is nearly four hcres to every ratepayer. ' We know that a large number only have about a quar. ter of an acre, then what are the huge blocks being held for? Could we not with advantage build on much of this land and, even from a speculative standpoint, give a more permanent value to that which remains. It is as well to understand that there Is no demand for land in the borough; land is

going begging that is owned by people who must sell. It is offered at twenty pounds a quarter acre section less than was paid for it some years ago. If those who own large accumulations of land in the borough will put up a few houses they will give a real and stable value to all land. 'ln a borough, of 1230 acres there are less than 600 assessments, averaging over two acres to an assessment. . Cannot those whose supreme interest it is to have an increase in the population of the town made possible find some way of meting out humane treatment to mothers and their children whoso breadwinner comes to work amongst them and increase the demand Tor the wares they sell? The housing of women and children in Taihape is a subject that the local branch of the Society for the Preservation of the Health of Women and Children might with profit to the State enquire into. The letter from a “Mother of Seven” we published on Thursday ought, surely, to have arrested that Society’s attention, and it probably did.