page_title: State housing
section_title: 1930s and 1940s state house design
hierarchical_section_title: State housing / The First Labour Government / 1930s and 1940s state house design
caption_attribution_description: State housing - State houses at Arapuni Hydro Works
context_page_description: State housing is a system of public housing in New Zealand, offering low-cost rental housing to residents on low to moderate incomes. Some 69,000 state houses are managed by Kāinga Ora – Homes and Communities, most of which are owned by the Crown. In excess of 31,000 former state houses exist, which are now privately owned after large-scale sell-offs during recent decades. Since 2014, state housing has been part of a wider social housing system, which also includes privately owned low-cost housing.
  An archetypal 1930s and 1940s state house is a detached two- or three-bedroom cottage-style house, with weatherboard or brick veneer cladding, a steep hipped tile roof, and multi-paned timber casement windows. Thousands of these houses were built across New Zealand as state housing, and as private housing after World War II, when the government started selling their drawings and plans in an attempt to hasten housing construction.
context_section_description: The state houses were constructed using over 400 designs, so that no two houses in a given area were identical. They were small by today's standards – the typical floor area was 81.9 m² (882 sq ft) for a two-bedroom house and 98.0 m² (1,055 sq ft) for a three-bedroom house. The houses had timber frames and floors supported by piles and a perimeter wall. Exterior cladding was typically timber weatherboard, brick veneer, or asbestos-cement sheets or shingles. Roofs were typically hip or gable with a steep pitch (30 degrees), and were clad with concrete or clay tiles, or asbestos-cement sheets. Windows on state houses were of the timber casement type, with three panes vertically in larger windows and two panes in smaller windows.
  The living room was considered the social and recreational hub of the house; it was the largest room and faced north to catch the most possible sun. The kitchen faced east to catch the morning sun, while bedrooms faced either east, north or west to catch sun for part of the day. Where possible, the private zones of the bedrooms, bathroom and laundry were on a different side of the house from the public zones of the kitchen and living room. Often the kitchen, laundry, bathroom and toilet were grouped together to reduce plumbing costs. The first state houses had the dining area in the living room; after initial feedback from tenants, the dining area was moved to the kitchen. Although the original plans included space for a garage, this was not included in the houses that were built, but a tool shed was provided to encourage tenants to grow a vegetable garden. On sloping sites, the tool shed and the laundry were typically placed underneath the house.
  Each state house had modern amenities for their time; bedrooms were equipped with built-in wardrobes, hot water was heated by an electric cylinder, and the kitchen was equipped with an electric range. In areas where electricity was not yet available, a chip heater on wetback and a coal range were installed. As washing machines and refrigerators were not commonplace in the 1930s and 1940s, the laundry was fitted with a copper boiler and two concrete tubs, while the kitchen was fitted with a food safe. Space heating was accomplished by an open fire in the living room – New Zealand's electricity supply was considered too unreliable for large-scale space heating before the 1950s.
caption: State houses at Arapuni, Waikato, showing many of the exterior features typical of 1930s and 1940s state houses.
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