Not Enough Houses
p. 153 · Read in the full issue
[?] S Headache
Not Enough Houses or Hotels
SUVA, March 3. ,NE of the most baffling and ' irritating problems in Fiji to day is the lack of suitable hous ; and hotel accommodation.
Ordinary bungalows and flats are an unbelievable premium. Owners Suva to-day are demanding pthing from £35 to £7O (£4O to i Australian) per month for a sonable house or flat —and the pless folk who must house them /es here are cursing bitterly, but ring the exorbitant rates.
Imall plain blocks of four and six iedroom flats are being erected in ces in Suva, and the builders are ifidently demanding £25 per flat, a 3-years or 4-years lease. A ck of 4 flats may cost £17,000. A ital of £25 per month per flat es a gross return of £1,200 per rum—not an excessive return on s kind of enterprise.
HE hotel position in Suva re mains tragic. In a rush time — and especially when the cool rist season comes —the hotels mot meet the travellers’ needs in This in turn limits the volume valuable tourist traffic to Fiji, hinstructed people say frequently, hy on earth doesn’t someone Id another modern hotel in Suva?” answer is: “For exactly the le reason that no new hotel has n built since the war in Sydney, 3re the need is desperate. The ital cost of such an establish it makes the operation of a hotel fconomic.” 7e all thought, when the Car ter-Hedstrom alliance took place, t the new Board immediately ild recommence the building of South Seas Hotel —now an un r heap of shaped concrete at the tier of Victoria Parade and •don Street, in the condition in ch it was left when the earth ke stopped operations late in 1953. ut there is no sign of resumption, tead, there is every reason to pose that Morris Hedstrom Ltd. abandon the project altogether, sss some completely new factor ears. : will cost at least £300,000 to iplete that building plan. The >t careful calculations show that earnings of such an hotel will give the investment anything a approaching a fair return, he answer may lie in an alliance tveen the Government and the firms. 11 classes, from the tax-gather- Treasurer down to the smallest pkeeper, want to see an ever •easing stream of tourists coming mgh Fiji. If the people as a )le —that is, the Government — Id in some way reduce the capital : of new hotels, so that private srprise could make a fair orofit of operating them, all classes
would benefit. But—can it be done, and how?
These problems of accommoda tion are not peculiar to Fiji, of course —all South Pacific countries are suffering under them.