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Salient. An Organ of Student Opinion at Victoria College, Wellington, N.Z. Vol. 12, No. 4. May 4th 1949
Why You Can't Get Board!
Why You Can't Get Board!
What are your digs like? Yes, I know, you leel lucky to have any. Board, like so many things a few years back, and like eggs still is in abort supply. Why? Is the population leaping at such a rate?
The reason why is obvious to anyone who goes round Wellington with his eyes open. Increasing numbers of houses—potential boarding houses, maybe even hostels, for students—are being converted into factories and offices, many of them connected with mushroom industries, whose hold on existence is tenuous, and whose service to the community is of doubtful magnitude, import restrictions here rear their heads.
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Sometimes I walk up to Varsity via Plimmer's Steps, Upper Boulcott Street and the Terrace. In Upper Boulcott Street I pass a large house which would make a first-rate hostel. It has been turned over from residential use altogether, to the Price Increasing Division! On the Terrace I pass a old house, deserted for a long period, but which I watched with great interest come to life again. Houses could not be left idle in these times. But was it to be used to live in? No. The Rider Advertising Company has moved in!
Another house that had gained some publicity for being empty for some years stood on the west side of Willis Street, a few doors south of St. John's Church. A large house it was too, and might have accommodated many students quite comfortably. But now that it is at last being occupied, who do you think is occupying it? A company handling fluorescent lighting and a wine and spirits merchant! Further Up the street we find another house has become the office of the Metal Import Company. Come back and turn down Ghuznee Street Opposite the Mansion's a glass firm occupies an old house and a few doors down on the other side another house now houses the Merchandising Corporation.
At the other end of the town, two, engineering firms have taken over two large houses on Thorndon Quay. The same process is going on all over Wellington, and to a very marked extent in both Hutt and Petone as well. On the main road from Petone to Lower Hutt we have all remarked the Caravan Company among the many that have taken up occupation of sometime human habitations.
True there are arguments to be advanced in favour of this. Building permits for new business premises are not being granted, which means that at least all the new materials are going into homes, but many of the older houses-are made of better materials than the new ones, and in any case, what's the use of building new houses when existing houses are being, wolfed for business premises at the same rate? This process to the casual observer may appear but a trivial modern tendency—but on closer examination is seen as a chronic disease reaching epidemic proportions.
How much longer is this going to be allowed to continue? Come or students, You have an organisation, Why don't you do something about it?
—C.B
(Note: This article is not an attack of the firms occured but an the [unclear: Governmental or Municipal] policy which allocate such action.)