CITY SLUMS.

Taranaki Daily News, Volume LIII, Issue 113, 20 August 1910, Page 4

CITY SLUMS.

In the debate on tile Public Health Act! Amendment Bill now before Parliament, Dr. Buck said the housing of the people I had a great deal to do with the health' and vigor of the nation. This is true, and it is only a question of time before the healtii of city residents in New Zealand! will greatly deteriorate, for in none of the King's dominions are such flagrant breaches of health laws permitted as in those cities. Although it is a hard thing to say, the best friend of a city has frequently been a fire to wipe out a slum area. There are pestiferous slum areas in all our cities, beyond an occasional onslaught by an inspector of nuisances, nothing is done. The exiiorbitant rents charged to workers in cities ia one of the chief reasons why many are bound to huddle together like sheep. Corporations frame building by-laws that are never enforced, so that it is easy to find almost new warrens that are bound to become slums in a few years. Greedy speculators have a habit of buying up condemned' buildings, and of using the rotten timber for suburban houses. The rentals are-so heavy in many cases that two or three families live in one house. Evidence was given in Wellington a year or two ago that in one six-roomed house four families, averaging five souls each, were inhabiting it, in order to share the 35s a week the owner required to repay him for a property that had cost him £3OO fifteen years toefofre! All our cities are infant cities, and, in comparison to Old World towns, babies in size. Congestion, close building, lack of air space, the worst possible material, and the most shameless jerry building are conditions that have neither been fought by the State nor by municipal corporations. The corporation that will enter into a lawsuit a-bout an overhanging cornice in a.business thoroughfare will shut its eyes year after year to pestilential and crowded areas unfit for human habitation. These are conditions which the authorities have threatened to face for many years, but 'vested interests have 'by some means beaten every pretended attempt to stop the mischief. It is only the ability of the people of the cities to live much of their time out of doors that keeps the crowded class in even reason--able health. It is not only possible to trace ill-health to overcrowding, bad building and insanitary methods, but it is also possible to trace crime to the same causes. 'lt is to be hoped that the matter will be thoroughly threshed out in Parliament, and 1 that slums will be razed to the earth. It is even more necessary that jerry-builders shoukl be restricted from cumbering the earth with abominations that will become slums in a decade.