WELLINGTON ROUNDABOUT

New Zealand Listener, Volume 2, Issue 34, 16 February 1940, Page 16

WELLINGTON ROUNDABOUT

By

Thid

Six Smart Girls NE house, says Mr. Webb, C) is being finished every half hour for the State Housing Department. This is fast work, but somehow there still seems to be a housing problem. In Wellington it really is serious -as serious as the employment problem was during the depression, But just as there were some who made work for themselves during the bad years, so now there are some whose initiative overcomes even the many difficulties connected with the life of a stranger in Wellington. All sorts of ingenuity are applied to the problem. One of the most interesting solutions I’ve come across is the "community household" idea. So far I’ve found half a dozen examples of a group of young women or young men renting a house and running it them-

selves. As the ladies seem rather more efficient at this sort of thing, Pll tell you about one of their best efforts: ,.. Try, Try Again To get there, you go up a lot of steps and turn to the left. Then you go down the first alleyway, on the left again, and turn back when you fall over a pohutukawa bush, for that’s the wrong place. Try the next alley. If it has a slippery step, broken down and sloping the wrong way, pick yourself up and return to the road. At the third attempt you should succeed. You go along a path, down some steps, along a path, down some steps, and along a path and down some steps and past a black cat sitting in the moonlight and you'll be there very shortly. The back of the house starts straight from the hillside. It is also the front, in some respects, for here stands the

front door, but the thouse does not face this way. It faces the other way — away from the front, if you see what I mean. You go to the front door and right through the house to get at the front window which looks over the back entrance and is a very different matter from the front door. From the front window you see a view that makes you want to turn three double. somersaults and a reverse back flip and kiss the cook, Just another view of Wellington Harbour, of course, but not so bad, whether it’s the moon coming over 2ZB’s Neon sign, or the mad mid-day sun. Having Got There Once you've become used to finding the front

entrance at the back of a house where people go downstairs to bed and upstairs to eat, and somewhere in. between to meet visitors, you can make some inquiries, as I did, and this is something of what you'll discover:There are six of them. To hire the use of a decent single room, they discovered, would cost them about 30/each per week, Restaurant meals and outside laundry would cost them another 30/- easily, not to speak of the lining of their tummies and of their frocks (Do frocks have linings?). Doing Something About It These six decided to do something about it, They did, and are. For 30/- a week each, they live in a very beautiful home, they have nourishing meals, they can rinse out a slip or sluice a stocking when they please, have friends in (or throw them out), as they like, and generally improve upon the popular idea of home sweet home. Upstairs they have a sitting-room (with a view attached, as stated), dining-room, and kitchen. Downstairs are the bedrooms and a bathroom, and I believe there’s a washhouse somewhere. Working to Schedule All this is not done without some organisation. Work is carefully apportioned. It takes little time when there are six to do it, and when each one has a set share to do. On the wall in the kitchen there are schedules of work which make sure everything is done in turn by everybody. They iron out all possible causes of disagreement. The household duties chart gives them a week each at certain necessary jobs. Breakfast is included among household duties, lunch is extemporised, but

the evening meal is important, and is honoured with a separate schedule. Each one has one day a week on which to prepare this meal, and with the name of each one are listed the names of two others to wash and wipe. On a grander scale still, is the Sunday dinner, for which there is still another chart, providing for this special duty over recurring six-weekly periods. And It Really Works The arrangement, they tell me, really does work smoothly. They have no timetables for putting out the milk bottle; but they take turns honourably, unless there is a visitor to be given the job. One takes care of the- household accounts. Another buys groceries and meat. A third makes sure the vegetables are fresh. By buying in quantities they buy cheaply, and incidentally collect enough boxes with their stores to keep themselves in kindling wood. Their rent is £5 per week for the furnished house. Other expenses include gas, telephone, radio, laundry (a personal item), food, electricity. It all comes to 30/- per week each. So that no one of them can bring too many visitors at the expense of the others, each is levied 6d per head per visitor per meal. To keep the gas account healthy, each puts a penny into a tin every time she has a bath. It’s all very attractive. I applied for a position about the house; but they seemed to think my eyes were too blue. So I'm going to buy a house of my own, perhaps, But I should very much like to hear, apart from all that, of any others with similar bright ideas. The address is Box 1070, Wellington,