There is no question about the desperate need for housing, but there is deep concern over the questionable aesthetics and ethics of some new Dunedin housing developments, both state and private.
They remind me of Malvina Reynolds’ protest song Little Boxes, which Pete Seeger topped the charts with in 1964.
But these new little boxes are joined together to make very big boxes, all the same. Boxes surrounded by concrete and carparks — a barren, stale environment for those who live in them.
There is also debate about the impact on Dunedin’s unique built heritage, past and future. Both these issues have now caused the Dunedin City Council to open the matter up for wider discussion and review (ODT 24.7.24).
Might a look back at the first state housing experiment in Dunedin help to recognise the pitfalls and plan appropriately in the present?
The Liberal government’s Workers Dwellings Act of 1905 was to provide quality state-owned housing at affordable rents.
Part of the programme was nine acres of land in Belleknowes called The Windle Settlement, later to become Rosebery St and Newport St.
The 1905 Act produced nothing like the uniformly utilitarian state housing of later governments, but, as far as Dunedin was concerned, neither was it successful or popular.
It was controversial from the outset.
The location chosen was the St Andrews golf course, a disused quarry, which many considered too far from workplaces, and the £240 an acre the government paid, far too much.
The newspaper, The Beacon, was outraged, nicknaming it "The Swindle Settlement".
"The very imp of mischief has conspired to baffle the workers. The most unsuitable of all the sites offered, was chosen, and an absurd price was paid for it. The workers asked for bread, and they received a quarry! Someone should hang for this."
Unperturbed, the government called for designs. Five architects were selected: the well-known James Salmond and Patrick Wales, the keen to be well-known Basil Hooper, and the never well-known Stanley Jeffreys and Cuthbert Brodrick.
They submitted several designs for bungalows and two-storey houses, in both brick and wood in the fashionable arts and crafts style. Tenders were called for in mid-1906, but many tenderers pulled out realising the £375 budget per house was unrealistically low.
The street layout was then finalised. Seven different designs were to be repeated in an initial group of 20 houses, but interspersed to create a streetscape that was harmonious but not monotonous.
The experiment by the government was also in part a Pygmalion policy. The working classes would appear as a version of their betters. Therefore, these houses were to be attractive, well-built, and have spacious gardens, encouraging tenants to take pride in their homes and not keep coal in the bath or poultry in the parlour.
An Otago Daily Times editorial reflected the social ideology that, I believe, drove the project.
"The cottages will have none of that sameness which might be associated with houses erected for working men and most, if not all, will boast a veranda. Gas will be laid on and baths will be fitted, with, in some instances, both hot and cold water. A high-pressure water system will make the dwellings up-to-date in every respect."
The architects had also been given instructions that no bedrooms were to interconnect.
This was in response to the haphazard slum-like additions being made to older smaller homes.
Also, the parlours were to be spacious enough to allow the women to carry out home industries.
The Windle was as much of a socio-economic experiment as it was a housing development — working class industrious moral families having dollhouse homes in an idyllic streetscape, conforming to upper-class ideals.
The first houses were finished by late 1906. Given the utopia the government thought it had created, it planned a ballot to deal with oversubscription by the hordes of the working poor who would doubtless pour in.
But hardly anyone applied. The ODT asked city estate agents why. One reason was location.
The area was bleak and exposed to the westerly winds. It was also too far from workplaces.
"When a workman has finished his day’s toil he does not care to walk so far up the hill and the cost of tram fares is a consideration."
That consideration was a real one. The tramways had workers’ concession fares, but not on the hill routes. There was a more local labour force.
The government was hoping the houses would be snapped up by Roslyn Mill workers, but it had misjudged.
Most of those owned their own sections and were therefore ineligible under the terms of the Workers Dwellings Act, which stipulated tenants may not be landholders.
By early 1907 the authorities were worried no tenants at all would take the houses and commentators were already describing the Windle Settlement as a failure.
The ODT reported other problems. The attractive Rosebery St of today was anything but a bed of roses in 1906.
"I got bogged in the middle of the road. If you could call it a road because not even a footpath exists. Last week the butcher’s cart got stuck and was extricated only after much difficulty.
No wonder applications to live here are so few."
Another of the few residents agreed.
"In the daylight we are able to find a track, but as there are no streetlights, it is pitiable groping your way in darkness and risking the mud knee deep."
Another pointed a finger of accusation at the architects and builders: "This house is so draughty that it will be unlivable come winter".
"The upstairs is inconvenient, and a double bed can only be placed in one of the three bedrooms.
The water tanks are above the kitchen door and the bolts do not appear to be strong enough to hold them, so are a danger as we pass in and out. One tank has been leaking since our arrival.
We drew the attention of the proper authorities to this, but it is leaking still."
Another resident gave an early example of "leaky homes", informing the ODT of furniture being ruined over months of leaks. He pointed the finger at the government agency.
"Were they plastering and tiddly-winking it up with putty, the same as was done on three different occasions with [the other house’s] leaky water tanks? These houses on account of official bumbledom have cost a great deal more than any houses built by private enterprise would have done."
There were other reasons why the Windle houses were not taken up. Some estate agents believed that the government had misread the local Dunedin situation entirely, claiming there was no demand from working families for houses of a rental around 10s a week, but there was from the truly disadvantaged.
As one agent told the ODT, "what is needed are plain substantial cottages at 7 to 8 shillings a week for the poor, especially distressed women — widows or deserted wives — with families — so the Benevolent societies can afford to pay their rents."
I think the great part of the failure was all about rents. People wanted to be homeowners, not tenants.
Even early into the experiment, inquiries were being made about buying the Windle houses outright, rather than renting.
The government realised this, putting further building on hold, and began offering low interest rates for home ownership instead which were eagerly applied for.
There were plans in 1910 and again in 1914 to build more houses at the Windle, but they came to nothing.
No more after the first 20 houses were built in Dunedin, and only 126 were ever built in the country.
There were many reasons for the failure of the 1905 experiment, but the main one lies in the changing socio-economic divisions of early 20th century New Zealand.
The upper classes thought the working classes would take up government housing, coming gratefully cap in hand for a roof over their heads.
But what did the working classes think? The estate agents knew. One commented: "There is a certain stigma attached to residence in a Government settlement".
Another agent went further: "People object to the term workers’ dwellings as being a class distinction".
I think that in the end it was the issue of class distinction that sealed the fate of the Windle Settlement.
Sadly, the spectre of class distinction still hangs over modern social housing. It will always do so until society changes its attitudes and drops its prejudices.
That will take more than bricks and mortar, but one thing can be done with bricks and mortar to help to get us there — by removing the stigma of being visually separated from the surrounding neighbourhood.
The new developments are creating clearly visible communes of sameness and segregation.
That mistake was made in the state housing of the 1930s and the social problems it caused are well known.
It will be repeated unless new projects learn at least one lesson from the Windle experiment.
It may have been misguided and mismanaged, but it recognised the need for diversity, individuality, quality and space to avoid the creation of a ghetto.
The 1905 Workers Dwellings Act may have produced very little benefit at the time, but it has left a rare and unique streetscape in Rosebery St, now protected as a heritage precinct.
Somehow, I do not see that future for the newly completed "boxes on the hillside" around the corner in Napier St, a century from now.
■Keith Scott has a BA honours in history and is the author of several books and articles on Otago history.
