MUSHROOM FLATS.

Taranaki Daily News, 5 November 1921, Page 10

MUSHROOM FLATS.

THEIR DAY IS RUN. There are indications that the house farming harvest, which, connected with the shortage of houses and the influx to the city of residents from adjacent rural districts and further abroad, has been a conspicuous feature of Auckland city life during the past two years, has been practically reaped (says the Star). In that time many hundred* of people heve become flat-dwellers, and of the business of letting and sub-letting there has been no end, in the process of making three families live where one lived before. Month after month the building permit returns of local bodies have been marked by the number of applications for the conversion of dwellings into flats, and in the city area the “at home” gossip has revolved around romances of the rents.

An inquiry made by a Star representative at the City Council offices indicated that the tide of flats has passed the flood, and there is a -perceptible ebb in the conversion class of building. From conversation with people engaged in catering for the flitting flat dwellers it appears that a line dropped in the vacancy column of the advertising sheet that fished up twenty or thirty- eager would be tenants last year brings now only five or six cautious inquiries, and that the flat has had to have the attractions of comfort and space, in addition to some show of reason in price, to become a revenue producer. The opinion of those in a posi/tion to gauge the current of population 'is that the well-equipped flat, us an acquired taste, has become firmly established in the social lif« of the community, to meet both the need and the preference of v<*rv’ng classes of people in a rapidlygrowing city. But- they are equally satisfied taat the tyrannous reign of the mushroom landlord who has been purveying makeshift residential fragments in the sacred name of flat at the expense of people caught in the house shortage pinch is nearly over. For one thing it was pointed out by a City Council official that a period of busy house building has already set in.