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Clip description
People in inner-city Sydney live in garages and temporary dwellings in backyards, unable to complete building their homes. The narration, spoken by Leonard Teale, lists reasons why proper housing is not affordable: lack of finance, insufficient loans for home building, high interest rates and too few rental dwellings being built. Members of building and other trade unions gather at the headquarters of the ACTU for a national conference. They are meeting to determine a new housing policy and program to address the housing crisis.
Curator’s notes
Footage of the ACTU People’s Housing Conference was added to the original version of this film, The Housing Problem and You (1957). The expanded version – now titled Not Only the Need – premiered at the National People’s Housing Conference in Melbourne on 1 July 1958.
Note the distinct change in the music around the halfway mark of this clip. Before the fade-out, as it accompanies images of inadequate housing and poverty-stricken families, the score has a mournful tone and builds to a tragic crescendo. When the committee meet to discuss housing solutions, the incidental music becomes vibrant, hopeful and uplifting.
