JERRY-BUILDING FOR THE STATE

Evening Star, Issue 18714, 16 August 1924, Page 16

JERRY-BUILDING FOR THE STATE

HO GARDENS, COMFORT, OR CONVENIENCE. LABOR ECONOMIST ON WHEATLEY SCHEME. Sir Leo Chiozza Money, a leading economust and supporter of the British Labor Party, is not favorably impressed by Mr Wheatley’s housing scheme. He writes in the ‘ Observer’i A good deal has been written, and justly, of tli© need to increase greatly the supplies of building labor and building materials if a good housing scheme is to come to any fruition in any reasonable space of time. The bricklayers do not exist to lay the bricks, and the bricks do not exist for the bricklayers to lay. I have before me a letter from one of our best brickmakera explaining that ho is oversold for months to come, and I know of many jobs that are waiting for bricks at this moment. For some time past second-hand bricks have been fetching fancy prices. In these circumstances, to talk of an enormous output of new houses is to waste breath. But hero I desire to direct public attention to other points, of importance. Even if material and labor are augmented, what houses are to bo built and how are they to be built? I am astonished that when it is proposed to embark upon a scheme estimated to cost something in ten figures, the costs of which are to be saddled upon our children and our children’s children, we are not carefully inquiring what sort of assets are to be built up with the money expended. What information is available goes to show that it is proposed to erect uneconomical I j small, comfortless, unsound, gardenless buildings, the value of which will have to he written off as a bad debt long before the debt attached to them is paid off. To put it in another way, we are embarking upon a gigantic scheme of State jerry-building. The houses will be uneconmnically small, because they are so limited in size that their footings, walls, roofs, and fittings will be ont of proportion to their floor areas. NO ROOM FOR PERAMBULATOR. The houses will be comfortless because their exiguous ' areas will not permit domestic work to be done comfortably or escaped from. In the tiny boxes contemplated there will be no proper room for utensils, or perambulator or bicycle. The interiors must necessarily become a jumble of untidy gear. It will never be possible to escape from discomfort. The inmates will bo driven to rig up shanties outside to accommodate whafc- the houses cannot contain, with results which can be witnessed in places where such contraptions, have already come into existence. The houses will be unsound, because no proper precautions are being taken to ensure the use of lasting materials. The common practice now is to build hollow walls of two skins, each 4iin thick, bound together by galvanised iron tics. The life of these ties may perhaps be put at fifteen or twenty years. The second point concerns timber. It ia very difficult now to buy seasoned wood; yet no precautions are being taken to utilise known processes to give such wood a fair degree of permanence. In these circumstances it is absurd to look upon the little boxes as national or municipal assets. Per contra, let it be observed that, apart from, the financial question, the sooner such miserable homes perish the better. The bouses will be landless. This ia a capital crime. Land ia iha cheapest coign

modity offering. Even in the belt round London it can still be bought in the open market at prices which make the provision of garden ground a very cheap amenity. It is, however, more than an amenity, for tho provision of one-fonrth or one-fifth of an acre of land for each house would .be a considerable contribution to the mitigation of unemployment in an industrial country. Such an area can supply a family with a considerable amount of good food, to say nothing of its saving moral influence. A WASTE OF RESOURCES.

I do not know if it will be suggested that the nation cannot afford to consider the erection of good houses in good gardens. I do know, however, that tho nation cannot afford to squander its resources upon unworthy buildings which must be discarded before the nation is very much older, leaving us with a housing debt and no housing assets to put against it. I have spoken of cheapness of land. What of tho dearness of building? On that head there is good reason to believe that proper organisation could sufficiently reduce costs to cover the difference between tho uneconomieally small houses that arc contemplated and tho economically larger houses that we ought to have. In Die case of very small houses the addition of a few r feet to tho floor area of a room makes all the difference between discomfort and comfort, but the addition to cost is not in proportion to the area gained. Considered as a problem of industry, tho building of a million or two million small houses is a trifle compared with the miraculous multiplication of complicated armaments in a very short space of time during the war. M T e must not allow ourselves to believe Dial after accomplishing a great task wo have not the organising power to perform what is comparatively a small one.