The Housing Problem, Again

NZ Truth, Issue 984, 4 October 1924, Page 5

The Housing Problem, Again

Labour Proposals In England Condemned By KG. Wells

knoJE^ disparaging reference to H. G. Wells, the well«PiZ WPlteP u and^! sl i oni^ '.n- New Zealand's Parliament a week iLSL t a ?°' J brOl i?, ht J forth P pote sts from Labor members. This incident lends^added interest to the following article by Mr. h n -L°" the fa , ults . of British Labor Party's much-boomed housing proposals.

■ Wells writes: There Is a shortage of nousmg accommodation m Great Britain; the picturesque, creeper-clad country .cottage is too often a cramped, decivilising, insanitary' fraud and most of the industrial population lives m sums worse than the corresponding f, I J n Ar "erica and little bigger, than those on the continent of Europe You cannot get a house or flat m which a civilised family can live for much less than a hundred pounds a year rent, and most of 'those available at that price are stereotyped and dulllooking and sometimes detestably ugly Below that level comes a : descending series of inconvenient, unsound,- and , unpleasant lodgments for the mass of the population. The Labor Ministry of Health has been making large encouraging gestures of help, it has projected big and complicated bargains With the building trades and the building trades unions that may— if all goes wellprovide at an immense cost on a quasicharity basis at the public expense, a sufficiency of houses for the poorer sort of people of fifty years hence according to the ideas of comfort and decency prevailing fifty years, ago. ■ BELOW. STANDARD. The Government and the local authorities are to pay about half the cost of building a multitude of houses, the assistance being given on the sole condition that they fall below a certain standard of size and comfort, and the industrial employer will be able to pay low wages m proportion to the cheapness attained. In other words, the Labor Government is doing a deal with the building trade- iii the interests of the lqw-grade employer and is putting British industry "dn the rates." They are returning by a circuitous route to the condition of things m England before the "New Poor Law," ■when farmers grew rich by employing labor m receipt of outdoor relief at otherwise impossibly low wages. The most striking thing about these housing proposals is the tacit acceptance by all parties m Parliament that the population of the coming years must be put away, each family m a little separate house of its own. If anything was needed to prove that the socialism of the Labor Party was merely skin deep and its creative intentions an electioneering bid, it would be this. If one thing is clearer than another m the outlook of the modern community it Is the impossibility of the small separate house. It is a cage of needless toil for women; it is a place of deprivation and hardship .for children. " The whole drift of'things is m favor of the highly organised block building containing a great number of houses. In this there can be ( electric light, radiators, and supply of hot and cold water, efficient sanitary accommoda- , tion, group wash-houses, adequate cupboards and convenient shopping j facilities, all provided at a less cost than is needed for the same number of scattered low-grade homes, each under its separate roof with lamps to clean, fires to light, water to boil and every possible : demand for feminine drudgery and servitude. In their

dreams people think of Mr. Wheatley's projected houses as little flowergirdled cottages, each Avith a bright little garden and a drying-ground and an uncontrolled multitude of children playing m the sun; m reality we shall get rows and rows of mean little boxes on the outskirts of our towns; jammed together into slums, each fouling the air with a separate chimney and remote from every modern amenity. - NOT HIS CASTLE. At present a large part of the population of East London lives m small houses of two stories, or two stories and basement. Idiotic foreign visitors surveying this from train windows remark on the Englishman's superb individualism so that every man's house is his castle. In the east end no man's house is his castle, every floor and often every room is a separate household and sometimes these households entertain * lodgers. This state of- affairs the new Labor legislation will extend and perpetuate. Yet plans have been made that show beyond dispute that, the whole population- of industrial London could be rehoused m fine and handsome apartment buildings, with night and day lifts, roof gardens and nearly all the light, air and conveniences to be found m a Kensington flat at hardly greater cost than would be needed to choke all the ways out of London with . a corresponding spread of Wheatley hovels, and so great, an amount of space could be saved by doing so that half that area of London could be made into a playground and garden. One of the most remarkable aspects of this housing legislation is the ineffectiveness of 'the women upon it. When women were struggling for the vote, the world was given to understand that their success would dq an end' to "man-made laws" and "manmade" ways of living. There was to be an astonishing release of the sensible practical feminine mind. Well, here is a question' that concerns women primarily. „ , A very large proportion of the girls and women of to 7 day, before their lives are out will have to live either m the slums that the Labor Government is failing to reorganise or m the rows and dumps of boxes of brick or timber that are to be spread out over the outskirts of every centre of population. There was nothing to prevent the distinguished women of the Labor Party from giving these men who are framing-up -these schemes to build pauper houses and .endow the building trade at the public expense, a lead towards better things. These houses of the Wheatley project ', mean an effectual subjugation of great multitudes of women to dingy drudgery for scores of years to come; they, mean the growth of a new generation of children ' with miserable standards of comfort and freedom. But so far we have no guidance' from intelligent women at all but only speeches from such notables as Dr. Marion Phillips sustaining the slums of Mr. Wheatley.

Generally the women of the country seem not to be awake to the* manner m which this business concerns them.