HOMES FOR HEROES

Evening Star, Issue 22896, 2 March 1938, Page 13

HOMES FOR HEROES

THE WORK OF BRITAIN MORE MODERN DWELLINGS KEEPING A PROMISE “ Since 1919 over 3,000,000 families, ox - , say, 12,000,000 persons, equalling 30 per cent, of the population of England and Wales, have moved into new houses.” Sir Kingsley Wood, British Minister of Health, may be forgiven if, when he made this announcement at a recent _ conference assembled to discuss housing px-oblems, he felt a certain pride in the success of the efforts which have_ been consistently made by both Parliament and people to keep the promise which Premier Lloyd George made to the returning war veterans 18 years ago, that tjxev should have “ homes fit for heroes,’’ writes Eyre Sandford Garter in the ‘ Christian Science Monitor.’ The progressive totals of houses and apartments, both those built by municipalities for workers in the lowerpaid clerical grades, artisans, and labourers, and the large numbers exacted by commercial firms for the rather more well-to-do, are impressive. Yet the problem is by no means solved, and its has three or four distinct aspects. Firstly, there was the actual shortage caused mainly by the complete hold-up of construction during the European War; in 1921 it was estimated that there were 928,000 more families in the United Kingdom than there were habitable houses very many of these families “ doubledup ” with relatives and friends. ABOLISHING SLUMS. Secondly, there was a determined effort to raise the standard of living both by abolishing the slums, the unfit and insanitary dwellings, and by reducing the serious overcrowding of premises which, in themselves habitable-, became slums when five or six families occupied rooms adequate for one or two, to the detriment of both health and morals. So Parliament, in the Housing Act of 1935, set up a definite standard of overcrowding.” The Act limits the number of persons who may occupy any dwelling by reference to the number and sizes of the various rooms. A room with a floor area of 110 square feet may be counted as providing accommodation for two persons (a child between one and 10 years old counts as a “ half ”), and a room of 70 square feet as accommodating one person. Judged by this standard, some towns are seen to have considerable leeway to make up. Thus Sunderland, an industrial centx - e in the north-east, has 20 per cent, of its population overcrowded. London has 7 per cent., but this is very unevenly distributed, since the Borough of Shoreditch shows a percentage of 17.2, while that of Woolwich—also an industrial area, but one with a good tradition of civic responsibility—admits to one of 1.7 only. SHIFTING INDUSTRIES. Another important factor in the housing problem has been the remarkable tendency, accelerated during recent years; for the centre of gravity of industry to shift from the north of England to the Midlands and south. For example, the manufacturer who, 25 years ago, would almost automatically have placed his new factory in Lancashire or Yorkshire, now thinks instinctively of Birmingham or the area around Loudon. The effect may be imagined from the development of Slough, 18 miles from the capital, which was described 30 years ago as a small market town not far from the Royal Borough of Windsor, and had then a population of 11,000. To-day it has 200 factories crowded round it. It is estimated that their employees include no less than 11,000 members of the families of Welsh coal miners who have forsaken an occupation and homes that can no longer support them. Workers in, this category obviously require low-cost housing, but this term is elastic, and may mean different things to different people. In England public attention is largely concentrated on the houses built by municipal authorities for the lowerpaid workers. These totalled _ 861,048 up to March 31, 1936. A typical layout, largely adopted (of course, with variations) for a cottage with four rooms contains a living room with a coalburning grate, which serves both for cooking and warming the room,_ a scullery which may contain an auxiliary gas or electric cooking stove; a bathroom and throe bedrooms. On the “ overcrowding ” standard already referred to such a bouse would suffice for a family consisting of man, wife, and three children (four or five children if they were all under 10 years old). LIKE THEIR GARDENS. American and European readers will perhaps remark on the absence of cen-

tral heating (which is not an unmixed blessing in the variable English climate) and the fact that these houses are only two stories high and possess no cellar or basement. English men and women like their “ little bit of garden ” in which to grow a few flowers and vegetables. They do not take kindly to block dwellings in which they have neighbours atop and below as well as on either side. In the central districts of London and other large cities, of course, tenement buildings are being constructed for working-class tenants, but these seldom have more than four or five stories (with no elevator), and they are usually labelled “ barracks ” by those who are moved into them not so much by choice as by the necessity of living close to their places of employment. The average cost of one two-story house, such as described, in 1936, was estimated at £397, including the price of the land. Naturally, the figure varies from place to place. In London it would be higher. The corresponding amounts in earlier years are shown in a following paragraph. It is already clear that the general increase in industrial activity, so welcome on other grounds, will force up the price of construction. On the other hand, it is to be hoped that the rate of loan interest, which stood at 5 per cent, or over up to 1932, will not rise much above the 3J which was paid in 1936. It is this charge which enters largely into the rent question, since housing loans in the case of public authorities are usually spread over 60 years. (In the’case of houses bought by the occupier on mortgage, the term is more often between 20 and 30 years.) INFLUENCE OF INTEREST. This factor of interest partly explains the variation in “ economic rental,” which for the years already quoted were as follows:

The term “economic rental ” is used to designate the sum which would cover the cost to the municipal authority, but the. actual rent paid by the tenants is always less. The difference is made up by subsidies provided partly from the national exchequer, partly from local taxes. The arrangements are complicated and have varied from year to year, but an idea of the amount of the national subsidy may be gleaned from the fact that under this head in the financial year 1935-36 the Chancellor of the Exchequer paid out about £14,000,000, or nearly 2 per cent, of the total Budget. This has been distributed over about 45 per cent, of the 3,000,000 houses already referred to, and is, of course, confined to the lowcost section.

Only a small proportion of the national appropriation went to the commercial undertakings which financed the lower-rented section of houses built by private enterprise; the larger part was used to assist the municipal authorities. The contribution of the latter varies.

Thus Birmingham and Manchester devote about 2.7 per cent, of their municipal income to the housing subsidy-; Liverpool, which has been hard hit by the industrial depression, only manages 1.5 per cent., while Bristol has provided as much as 5.6 per cent. _ These figures, of course, give no indication of the amount which these municipalities spend on their housing programmes ; they merely represent the contribution to the bousing account, which is taken out of general local taxes (including the sums which municipalities are required to contribute as a condition of receiving subsidies from national resources). Tt might be thought that the housing poliov both of the central Government and of the local authorities would vary

appreciably according to the political colour of the party in power, but detailed examination of the figures hardly seems to bear this out. _ The pace of development has been influenced by many factors such as cost of construction, the price of loan money, and the availability of skilled labour; and although at election times political partisans seek to make capital of what they describe as their opponents’ mistakes, the students of this, as of other branches of social history in England, find that there is very little divergence between influential Conservative and Labour viewpoints on the general aims of the housing programme. Similarly, it would be hard to find any evidence that the political affiliations of the tenants of subsidised houses have been influenced by the contributions of the central and local authorities.

The normal municipal “ housing estate ” embracing anything from 1,000 to 5,000 families will show that the political sympathies of its electorate are overwhelmingly on the side of the Labour Party, which is what one would expect in a population drawn almost entirely from labourers and artisans. Not one in a thousand of the tenants would be able to say whether the house in which he lives at !ess_ than the economic rental was provided by a Government of the Right or one of the Left, since both Conservatives and Socialists have worked throughout for the improvement of housing conditions for the benefit of the Community at large.

Capital Cost Rent per (including Land). Week Year. £ s. d. 1933 420 15 0 Int. at 5 p.c 1926 511 17 0 Int. at 5 p.c 1932 374 14 0 Int. at 5 ip.c 1936 . 397 11 10 Int. at 31 p.c