The Taihape Daily Times. AND WAIMARINO ADVOCATE MONDAY, DECEMBER 2, 1918 ERRONEOUS RENT COMPUTATIONS.

Taihape Daily Times, 2 December 1918, Page 4

The Taihape Daily Times. AND WAIMARINO ADVOCATE

MONDAY, DECEMBER 2, 1918 ERRONEOUS RENT COMPUTATIONS.

(With which is Iccorporatefl The T*ibape Post i.a'd Whlebmitio News).

From experience there lias been uniform cause for regarding the Monthly Abstract of Statistics with a good deal of respect. So far as Taihapc is involved therein, the cost of living thermometer has fluctuated correctly in accordance with the relative meteorological conditions, but in the issue for October this thermometer shows signs of having been tampered witn. Before it was put into the Taihape rent vat someone that evidently added a few lumps of ice for the rent temperature has dropped, bringing it clown from the hitherto conspicuous position well above all other towns, a close runner-up to Wellington, to among the ruck. In one short month it has dropped down to and gone below nine other towns, while the real indications are that rents are still hardening everywhere in the Borough. According to the thermometer the law of supply and demand has no application to the rent question in Taihape; rents are reputed to be the same in October, 1918 as they were in the prewar years from 1909 to 1913. Every week desirable residents are leaving the town or are refusing to remain after weeks of futile effort to find a home for wives and families. Two most highly respected, clever, worthy in every respect, men ,after living in rooms and boarding-houses with their families for some six months, decided to shake the dust of a town from their feet that does not want them. This was last week’s contribution to the exodus that is continuously going on. The town is tending to become a place where only single men are possible, of men who can be stacked away in rows and tiers like so many benzine cases. From unsought experience we can correct Mr. Malcolm Fraser’s Department in its statement about Taihape rents; he says houses of three- rooms are, averagely, 9/3 per week; four rooms, 13/4 per week; five rooms, 14/10 per. week, and even eight-roomed houses are let at only 25/ -per week. We wonder what the object or idea is in tampering with cur rent thermometer like this. Last week a four-roomed house was in course of being made out of a piece of a larger building vjith additions and separate conveniences; twentyfive shillings a week was offered before it was finished by an old resi-* dent, but the demand was for thirty shillings, and it was a very firm demand at that. It is a fact that cannot bo denied that houses of four rooms with all sanitary conveniences will let readily at twenty shillings a week. There is nothing to gain by having the rent question of the town misrepresented; to smother .such, questions with untruth is not betterment, but it does contribute to that condition in which, when the manhood of the country is essential to fight the country’s battles it is found “broken in physique, I iil-housed, ill-fed and overwrought.” Let the town manfully and determinedly face its housing difficulty. Those who would build houses cannot do so because even the high rents that are obtainable do not warrant the outlay involved. The cost of building is a bar to profitable investment in the erection of houses; no man Is expected to be so wanting in common-sense as to invest his money in that from which any real return, after costs of management and losses arc provided for, can be depended upon, and while an obsolete rating system penalises him on every sovereign he is foolish enough to put into a building, or, in fact, in any improvements. There seems to be the mistaken notion J abroad that it is the duty of individual j citizens to build and provide housing accommodation; it is frequently said, “Why doesn’t so-and-so build houses, he has plenty of money?” but they do not realise that a fair interest is always awaiting available capital, who- ■ ther owned bv individuals or corporations. The very first duty cf general and local government is to see that every member of the body politic is

domiciled healthfully, both as regards the house and its sanitary conditions.' So far as the private supply of houses in this town goes it is proved a great failure. If the wheat grown to feed the people is inadequate, wheat can he imported at a lower price than our farmers can grow it at, but similar processes do not apply to houses, or there would bo a great ary go up from Taihape for a good many shiploads of them. The Government Statistician’s informants have stated that the cost of a three-roomed house to rent is averagely, in Taihape, 9/3, but we can assure Mr. Fraser that he will be very fortunate if he gets one room fit to live in for that money. We have undeniable knowledge of one case in which three rooms are rented in a large house at 17/6 per week, and we have reason to believe that is a case below the average. What has to be faced is the fact that houses must be provided for the people; that there arc a very large proportion of workers and particularly of men with large families, who need* them, most, who do out earn sufficient to bring building their own homes within the range of possibilities; that men will not invest their money into a solution iOf the housing problem simply because there is little or no remuneration, but a good deal of anxiety about money so invested; then, the question is, are families to be allowed to go ou piling up, two and three in a building not more than large enough for one, and with such sanitary surroundings as are found amongst decently kept pigs? As a noble British Lord remarked, “We house our prize pigsbet ter than we do our British manhood.” People cannot go unhoused, and if Taihape canont, or will not furnish houses its population certainly cannot increase, and incidentally its business must languish. One of the leading business men of this town recently stated, “If the Borough Council would raise a loan sufficiently large to enable the erection of fifty houses they would become administrative benefactors never to be forgotten. Land in the business centre is high-priced, but there is ample land available, including Borough and other building reserves, upon which houses, even at present high prices, could be made to pay the rate of interest on loans the Borough could borrow at, and the Borough has the advantage iover the private capitalist in that every house built earns rates, not pays them, which are additional to interest on capital. However, it is not understandable how the Government Statistician has been led into the error of i stating that rents in Taihape have positively slumped, while just the very opposite obtains.