Ray Williams
I remember everybody being extremely happy to get their houses

I first came to the Department of Housing in 1974. It was the Housing Commission then. The original office at Minto was in a demountable on Guernsey Avenue, somewhere around where the Minto Family Centre is now.

The estate had 300 or 400 houses when I got there. Minto was a very countrified area in those days. Very few houses, especially up where the estate was. All that was there were new roads, vacant blocks and a lot of building going on.

I remember everybody being extremely happy to get their houses. Some had waited three to four years to get a brand new house. In those days, there were no problems with people paying rent, they were just so happy to have their houses. There was little infrastructure. One thing I remember was that the local bakeries would line up; we used to have what we called “mass signups” so that 20 or 30 houses would come through at once, we’d invite them to all come and sign-up, and we’d have a local bus company and we’d have representatives of local bread shops competing for trade and even handing out free bread. Of course that didn’t last too long

There were a lot of places like Herne Bay — old housing estates, that were closed down and people were seeking houses. Quite a lot came from the inner city, that didn’t seem to be a problem. There were people arriving who had very little of anything, who had no furniture. We worked with some of local charities in assisting these people to get the basics — beds and so on, to fit their new house out with.

I remember a very nice lady around in Goodwin. She had a goat and it ate everything. She would put it on a rope and tie it up in the front yard to eat the grass down, but it would eat the rope and then go and eat everybody’s garden. This goat was always a problem. Somebody pinched it in the end.