LIVING IN HOVELS.

Taranaki Daily News, 4 August 1921, Page 5

LIVING IN HOVELS.

CHRISTCHURCH CASES.

SHOCKING REVELATIONS.

RESULT OF HOUSE SHORTAGE.

Christchurch, Monday. w W r hile we are sending help overseas to starving and disease-ridden children of other countries we might occasionally think of our own. We have just as bad conditions on a smaller scale in. Clu-tot-phureh,” said a local social worker.

“What ia the reason for it?” you ask “There are several causey, but the main one to housing, rack rents for hovels, the crowding together of diseased families, the absence of the ordinary sanitary decencies of life. Let me tell you eome of the things which the Social Service Guild of this city has found out through inquiries it has made during the last week or two.

‘‘We went into a tumble-down house in Sydenham, consisting of four very tiny rooms. We found a mother and he." six children living there. The mother t a consumptive, but she had to share a bedroom with the eldest girl. It is only a matter of time until the girl gets the disease too. In a back room, the smallest you could imagine habitable. we found two stretchers. These provided for the rest of the family, four of them, and one fcalso suffering from consumption. The boy of the family slept in the sitting room. For this accommodation they were charged 30s a week. That to an indication of what our housing problem to in Christchurch “In another house we found a man, bis wife, and two children living in a single room. Both husband and wife were be ing treated for consumption Their two children are very delicate, and are potential consumptives. “A man and his wife and eight children we found in a four-roomed house, two additional rooms being in such a dilapidated condition that they could not be used. The whole family slept in the four small rooms. The doctor has ordered the family to leave the house on the ground that it is unfit for habitation, but they cannot get another house. Yet for what they have got they pay 25s a week. “Elsewhere we found a husband in the late stages of consumption occupying the same room as his wife and two children. It was a miserable room, and badly furnished at that. They paid £1 a’ week for the prvilege. <f We found many instances of this kind. Another illustration of the conditions I refer to is one where the husband was found actually dying of consumption, and the wife and six children living in the closest contact with him every day. He has since died. We have had instances where 30s a week is charged for the poorest accommodation. The head of the family to earning perhaps £4 a week. He has to pay rent out of that and keep his wife and sometimes six children. When you think of the cost of household commodities at present you can imagine how he does it I”