HOUSING IN BELGIUM

Evening Post, Volume CVI, Issue 90, 13 October 1923, Page 14

HOUSING IN BELGIUM

REBUILDING THE DEVASTATED

EEGIONS.

A friend recently returned from the devastated regions of Belgium tells me that by the end of this year that part of the country will have been entirely restored ao far as housing accommodation is concerned, states a correspondent of the- " Manchester Guardian." Out of 100,000 houses destroyed or damaged, over 75,000 have been restored at an expense of 685 million francs.

Some figures that he gi-ws illustrate the amazing rapidity of this reconstruction. In the town of Menin, for example, the former pre-war population was 18,353; it is now 18,175. At Ypres the present population numbers 12,122, as compared with 'the pre-war 19,497. The villages show an. even more complete return of .their former inhabitants. In Messiries every one of the 333 pre-war houses was damaged or destroyed, but it is' now occupied by 980 inhabitants, as compared ' with 1404. Passchendaele was, of course, entirely obliterated; now 498 houses have been rebuilt and'accommodation provided for 3051, as compared with the 1914 figures of 4030. Nieuport lias rebuilt 606 houses out of the 951 demolished, and is only short by 300 of the former population. Some of.the new houses, especially in the garden villages of Kalfvaart and Ligy, on the Dixmude and the Menin roads respectively, are of a higher standard than, the ordinary working-class dwellings in Belgium. Each house occupies approximately 65 square yards, and contains a large living-room, four bedrooms, a loft, a cellar, and a washhouse. A cistern of reinforced concreteis provided, and the ventilated walls are of double thickness.