Housing market

STUFF Piotr Mierzejewski, a wheelchair user, laments lack of accessible housing in Dunedin, as he has to shower at the local swimming pool. Piotr Mierzejewski is living in a sleepout without hot water or an accessible bathroom, while he waits on the Ministry of Social Development (MSD) and Kāinga Ora to find him a home. In the meantime he’s resorted to sponge baths or showering at the local swimming pool to wash himself. So far he’s been waiting five months on MSD's Public Housing Register , ever since he and his wife were evicted from their Dunedin home, but the couple has been searching for an accessible home for more than three years. While he doesn’t like to complain, Mierzejewski, who uses a wheelchair, describes their search as like trying to find a needle in a haystack. READ MORE: Wheelchair user asks Kāinga Ora for safer home each month for 18 years Wheelchair user worries she won't be able to bathe in emergency housing Lack of accessible housing … [Read more...] about Wheelchair-user forced to shower at local swimming pool due to lack of accessible housing

FOR nearly a hundred years “ Butterfield’s ” was as well known in the town of Slumborough as the post-office, and almost as much frequented. Before the war the firm was represented by Joseph Butterfield, a most comfortably prosperous, mild man, who had succeeded to the honors of his house as hereditary grocer there. Nominally a grocer, but if any feminine stranger had chanced to be in pressing need of, say, a hoopskirt, of the kind in vogue then, she would probably have been directed to Butterfield’s, where she would have found some of these elegant and indispensable articles of dress swinging gracefully from hooks in the doorway of the store. For “ Hang the hoops in the do’ of the sto’ ” was one of the orders of the head of the firm, given as regularly as the day came and the “ sto’ ” was opened. Had any masculine stranger wished to provide himself with a book, it was to Butterfield’s that he would have been sent by almost anybody in the town, — either there or to the chemist’s ; and … [Read more...] about Butterfield & Co.: In Two Parts. Part One

BROMPTON was one of the earlier New England settlements. Its cemeteries contain numerous stones dating back almost to the middle of the seventeenth century, and the town celebrated its bicentennial years ago. Its first meeting-house was burned by Indians. In the Revolutionary era its citizens hurried away to the earliest engagements around Boston ; and of that period it preserves many memorials, notably two line old taverns, in which some of the most famous of the Continental officers are known to have lodged. But we are not now concerned with its history, and I come directly to the time, a decade or so before the civil war, when the town, after having been for more than a century and a half a small farming community, for which all necessary boot and shoe making and repairing were easily done by a few cobblers, was beginning to make shoes on a larger scale, for export. Brompton has neither water - power nor any of the other natural advantages which would have made it possible to … [Read more...] about A Massachusetts Shoe Town

FORTY years ago there were on the map of Kansas a few red spots indicating the location of forts, and here and there along the streams near the State’s eastern border were little circles indicating towns. Many of the names upon that early map remain, and designate hopeless villages, the scenes of brave deeds and patriotic efforts ; and a few of the towns of a generation ago survive, fulfilling in some small measure the bright dreams of their founders. But most of the old names, once familiar to the whole nation, are forgotten. Could some ghost of those stirring times come back to call the roll, how many such towns would fail to respond ! Quidaro ? Gone ! Mariposa ? Gone ! Sumner ? Gone! Tecumseh ? Gone ! Minneola? Gone! From 1870, for several years eastern and central Kansas was a battle-ground between man and nature. In those years the desert was finally subdued. During the succeeding decade, men devoted themselves to the occupation of running up and down the newly made garden with … [Read more...] about A Typical Kansas Community

Women scurried past them as if looking dowdy was contagious, the French refused to be seen in them in public and mothers urged their daughters to hide them away from any prospective husbands. For something so easy to wear, elasticated waists were given a hard ride and, until recently, were – outside of sport and, at a push, planes – only acceptable for the very young or the very old. Anyone in the busy, striving middle made the effort with zips, belts or buttons when they left the house. Fashion, of course, made its contempt for the elasticated waist clear. When Anna Wintour was once asked if she ever wore joggers, she fixed the interviewer with an icy stare and simply replied, “no”. Karl Lagerfeld’s withering line – “Sweatpants are a sign of defeat. You lost control of your life so you bought some sweatpants” – summed up the industry attitude. They were the domain of Little Britain’s Vicky Pollard and five-a-side footballers. But, oh, how times change. I remember living in … [Read more...] about How the elasticated waist bounced back into fashion