The Stratford Evening Post WITH WHICH IS INCORPORATED THE EGMONT SETTLER. MONDAY, SEPTEMBER 4, 1911. CHEAP DWELLINGS

Stratford Evening Post, Volume XXXI, Issue 16, 4 September 1911, Page 4

The Stratford Evening Post WITH WHICH IS INCORPORATED THE EGMONT SETTLER. MONDAY, SEPTEMBER 4, 1911. CHEAP DWELLINGS

The authorities not very long ago instituted a great block of buildings in Paris known as the Cheap Dwellings. The right to become a tenant is only obtained by the parents of at least one child. The undertaking is an effort to remedy that lamentable state of affairs here that makes it often impossible for families, where there arc young children, to find house-room. These new buildings are situated in a wide avenue-like street planted with trees close to a working district. They have only been habitable since the beginning of this month, and arc very extensive. Yet evens flat or lodgment is already let, the greater number already inhabited. The buildings are beautifully clean and well-kept, the rooms well-arranged and prettily papered, at rents varying between £8 and £2O a year. Hundreds of such buildings must bo raised if the Parisian workman is to have any chance of being decently lodged and to lie at liberty to rear a family. Not only are children an insurmountable obstacle in the way of finding dwelling room in ordinary houses; it often happens that tenants are turned out simply because the family has increased. Rents also are outrageously high. The question of rents and house-room was before the Chamber, and strict measures will undoubtedly be taken to improve the actual state of affairs. The new buildings arc an important step in the right direction. Another question under serious consideration here is that of child law-breakers and youthful criminals. A scheme has been drawn up by which children convicted of common offences would be treated by a system of freedom under control. Such children arc to live at home in their own family unless the homo lie a distinctly undesirable one, to go to school or work as other children, but to bo all this time under the guardianship of certain persons especially charged by the courts to keep an eye on them. The authorities are considering the possibility of applying the scheme to children up to the ago of thirteen.