TRANSFORMING SLUMS.

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXIII, Issue 19236, 27 January 1926, Page 11

TRANSFORMING SLUMS.

HOUSING REFORM IN LONDON.

GARDENS, LIGHT AND COLOUR

. Tho slums of London are gradually disappearing and their inhabitants are being transferred to garden cities on the borders of the metropolis. Under the Housing Act the London County Council has powers to accomplish this great work, and it is interesting to see to what extent jt has already been carried out, says the Morning Post. To the large areas already acquired by compulsory powers for housing schemes in and around London must now be added an area of some 800 acres in the Mitcham-Morden district, which has just been purchased. It will soon bo a large new suburb capable of housing some 35,000 people.

A representative of tho Morning Post visited the notorious Brady Street district at Bethnal Green, where fine new blocks of flats are rising on the site of the worst slum districts in tho metropolitan area. Here in the small, area of 7£ acres 1875 people are being displaced and rehoused.

The tenements which arc being erected in this area comprise two, three, four, and five-roomed flats. The rents range from about lis a Iveek to 16s, and in cases where displaced tenants are unable to pay this rent, accommodation has been found for them in other parts of London. The moving of these people is a matter of some magnitude, but is being carried out with tact and despatch. Becontree, the new garden suburb near Barking, was the next area to be visited. It is a delightful self-contained town of 2700 acres, and has 20,000 houses, schools, churches, shops and ad ministrative offices. Owing to labour difficulties the houses are of many different types, but this lack of uniformity is already one of the chief charms of tho new satellite town.

Instead of serried rows of houses of the same colour and design, there are red houses, yellow houses, grey houses and white houses at many different, angles to the roads, all with gardens of their own and with a new-found individuality of their tenants expressed in curtains of every type and colour. It would be hard to imagine a greater contrast than that provided by the tumble down squalid cottages of darker London, where sun and light rarely penetrate, and this new town of gardens, light and colour.