Editorial

We all have a housing problem. Some of us want to build, buy, or rent a house. The rest of us find that what we have costs us too much, is too small or too large, has too much ground to maintain or not enough open space, is too far from our work, too close to other people's. If our clothes suited us as well as the houses we live in, we would be a strangely dressed race.

Most people are aware of all this. The past few months have produced a National Housing Conference, a lower-cost house competition, the Wilson and Hammond houses, some more imported prefabs, a few private housing schemes, a drop in the rate of both public and private building, and a spate of words on such subjects.

The Conference was a serious attempt by the Government to find out causes and remedies, and if it was effective it deserved to be. Findings were generally sound, within the limits of the agenda, though often excessively cautious. In assessing the nature of the problem the Conference seemed to under-estimate the dangers to the national economy of unlimited subdivisions, and the proportion of people for whom the mortgaged or rented three-bedroom house in the suburbs is no answer. In suggesting solutions the Conference seemed over-concerned with minor financial manipulations and neglected the possibilities of efficient methods of construction, improved practice in siting, and variety of housing types.

We can only hope that the Government in framing and implementing a policy based on the Conference recommendations shows itself as vigorous and far-sighted as it would have us believe.

If the Conference was a qualified success, the lower-cost house competition was a qualified failure. Those entrants who were not deterred by the extraordinary conditions of the competition (which were in any case ignored by the judges) should have been warned by the publication, well before the closing date, of the two infamous houses under the names of two of the judges, Messrs. Wilson and Hammond. These two houses, despite the extensive publicity they received, contributed nothing to better housing in New Zealand. The Wilson “experimental” house clothed its ponderously conventional plan in bright paint, the bright paint of the Hammond “experimental” house clothed as bad an attempt at open planning as we have seen. Both houses made timid attempts to improve on State House detailing and trim, with just a little success.

The entries in the competition were generally disappointing. The most encouraging feature was the fact that the judges rated highly the sensible structural methods suggested by many competitors. It is now up to the State Advances Corporation, which in the past has discouraged every deviation from the State House norm, to support such improved building practice.

Apart from this hope, the competition as a means to producing good houses at less cost was a failure, and could hardly have been otherwise. A more effective competition would have been to invite collaborating teams of builders, architects, engineers, building component manufacturers, etc., to submit designs and tenders for the development of a large area, say at last 500 housing units. Then we might have got somewhere.

The Government has been trying to do just this with its 1,000 Austrian prefabs at Wellington and Auckland. But they seem to have failed again. The houses cost too much, and are poor in planning, detailing, appearance and siting. The fault does not appear to lie with the contracting firm.

On the other hand, some private building firms in New Zealand have been making serious and effective efforts to build houses atless cost. We believe that the housing problem could be met if our Government gave more encouragement to genuine enterprise and paid less attention to the unfounded fear of appearing to advocate the unorthodox.

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