CASUAL WORKERS AND STATE HOUSES

Evening Post, Volume CXXVIII, Issue 18, 21 July 1939, Page 8

CASUAL WORKERS AND STATE HOUSES

(To the Editor.)

. Sir, —Sir Alfred Ransom, in his speech on the Address in fteply, referred to the housing conditions. He stated that the rentals were beyond the purse of the ordinary working man. He is evidently not in touch with the workers and their conditions, otherwise he must know that the casual worker is at the present time paying double the rentals of the State houses for hovels and flats and rooms. I quite agree with his statement that it is the high wage and collar worker who has been privileged to obtain the State houses. The Government has let down the large body of casual Workers who are in dire need of hygienic houses and decent living conditions for their families. Instances such as the following are surely sufficient evidence to show which way the committee's inclinations are: A young man's application for a State house was granted, and he took possession. He then married. Another man in the permanent employ of a local body for many years, average wage over £6 per week, one child, gets a State house. Hundreds of cases such as the above could be placed on record.

There are hundreds of parents with large families who have had applications in, some for two years, and are still waiting. Cannot the-Minister of Housing form a committee such as they have in America where the committee is divorced from the departmental officers, and women are brought into the scheme who can visualise the needs and the urgency of an applicant for a house? The allotting of the houses is "a wash out" as far as the ordinary worker is concerned.—l am, etc.,

A.G.G,