Poverty Bay Herald. PUBLISHED EVERY EVENING. GISBORNE, FRIDAY, FEB. 27, 1925. NATIONAL HOUSING.

Poverty Bay Herald, Volume LI, Issue 16672, 27 February 1925, Page 4

Poverty Bay Herald. PUBLISHED EVERY EVENING. GISBORNE, FRIDAY, FEB. 27, 1925. NATIONAL HOUSING.

One of the best evidences of the sincere desire for modern progress and uplift, of the people Hint influences the. British nation is given by the unanimity with which proposals for housing are held to be of first importance by all sections in the British Parliament. It is generally realised that slums in cities are one of the greatest of presentday evils; that until they are swept away and comfortable arid healthful dwellings provided for the people no nation can consider it has made real progress in modern civilisation. Mr. i SI. Loe Straehey has been contributing * a series of articles to the London Spectator on the slums of England and iSeullaml, in which he says in pari : “A man has no right lo let an insanitary, and therefore poisonous, house than he hart to sell poisonous drugs or poisonous food. There is no haidship, economic or moral, in adopting the principle that no man shall receive money for ! the sale or hire of commodities which have been deviated to he insanitary. As illustrating what the removal of slums means, Dr. Francis Allan, who has been j medical officer of health for Westminster i for 32 years, records a marked decrease in deathrate and wonderful improvement in health as (he result of the improvements effected in that part of • London. O.i the site of the fine t.horj oughfaio of Kingsway lie recalls some of the worst slums in London, where “conditions were terrible and disease rampant.” When the street was conI structed no less than three and a half j acres of toirible hovels were demolished. In general there lias been a reduction j of 33 per cent, in overcrowding, and no Ilesrt than 74 per cent, reduction in such extreme congestion as compelled two ( people to live in only one room. Tho slum problem is an enormous one. It is based on avarice and greed, and stretches

ns far os these world-wide vices of mankind. But great as it is, it is begging the question to say that it is too big to solve, and' no one who realises what a. menace overcrowding is to the physical and moral health of the world will say a. isolation is not worth looking for. The war showed that many things previously thought impossible' could bo readily accomplished if tackled in a resolute manner. The new Government in Britain has made housing a first plank in its policy, and Mr Neville Chamberlain’s Bill is the llrst of its new measures to be introduced. He has approached the question from the national standpoint as a matter of urgent practical business. The previous Minister of Housing proposed to encourage both sides of the building trade to co-operate with each other and with the Ministry especially with a view to increasing the supply of labor. It has not yet proved very successful, but it is to stand and will be fairly administered. There will be full encouragement of building schemes based on direct labor. But Mr Chamberlain desires to accelerate the pace of re-housing the people, realising that housing, with all its importance for health and efficiency and the social spirit is a main factor in Britain's capacity for competition and power of recovery. Veiy much, states the’ Daily Telegraph, depends on the experiments in alternative housing method's now talcing place. In the most hopeful passage of his speech, Mr Chamberlain gave a promising report on the type of factorymade house which Lord Weir has designed. This and other types will shortly be available for more general inspection. They open up a tempting vision of a mass supply beyond anything which could be hoped for in bricks and mortar. ' They may not he the equivalent. of brick, stone, or concrete houses in many ways. But. if they reach the expected standards cf commit and appearance, the emergency not only justifies lint demands their use. “My own view,” stated Mr Chamberlain, “is that t hese houses are not only net- unpleasant to the eye, as viewed from the outside, hut exceedingly pleasant and homelike inside.” There were, said the Minister, those advantages to he gained by const meting steel houses: the production of them could he multiplied indefinitely ; they required materials for the production nf which the capacity of this Country was far in excess of the demand; they were cheap; and they would give a large amount of employment to just that very section of the community most in need nf if. It. is explained that these houses will not compete either in labor or materials with the established building agencies. On the other hand, they will preserve to' the country by the eication of new employment skilled craftsmanship of the kind it can least spare, and in which it has been losing most heavily through emigration. This, and the immediate saving in unemployment, expenditure, will probably figure in any balance-sheet Hint may he drawn up. “At the moment,” states the Telegraph, “tho building operatives are threatening obstruction by requiring that, the tmskTled labor to he recruited for the assembly and erection of factorymade houses shall receive skilled pay. The building operatives, whatever may have been the case in the past, have now the most secure employment in all industry. It is safe for a generation under natural guarantees, to sa,v nothing of the wire entanglement with which the building unions have surrounded it. Nothing that Lord Weir or others may do to allay the house famine can injure the bright prospects of building employment. For all that, if the building unions have their way, the engineering industry is to be forbidden to experiment or to co-operate. Perhaps the engineering industry will have something to sa- to this doctrine that England's need is the builders’ opportunity and no one else’s. Certainly the public will. With the builders’ leave, however, interest in the next phase of housing will chiefly concentrate on the new possibilities. Clearly Mr Chamberlain is fully alive to them and entirely unprejudiced. The whole tenor of his open-minded, able and confident survey of housing problems suggests that, the high hopes placed in his administration are not. likely to lie disappointed.”