The Waikato Times With which is Incorporated The Waikato Argus. SATURDAY, JANUARY 10, 1920. BRITAIN’S HOUSING PROBLEM.

Waikato Times, Volume 92, Issue 14260, 10 January 1920, Page 4

The Waikato Times With which is Incorporated The Waikato Argus. SATURDAY, JANUARY 10, 1920. BRITAIN’S HOUSING PROBLEM.

Acute as the housing problem is in this Dominion, it is permissible to say that the position in Britain is far more serious, and the Government and local ; authorities are at their wits’ end to lino a satisfactory solution.. According to a recent statement by the Minister of Health, 200,000 houses were being planned, 8000 were being built, schemes for 10,000 wore in an initial stage, and plans for at least half a million more had yet to be provided. One would have to know all the factors that may affect, one way or the other, the rate of future construction before trying to .estimate how long, at the present rate, it would take to meet the needs of the population, hut it looks at least a 10 years’ job. Other estimates of the public requirements arc even more serious. Sir Charles Ruthen, a member of the Council of the Society of Architects, declared, in an address to the Society, that if the housing problem was to be handled in any way satisfactorily during the next live years, some 200,000 houses must be erected annually during that period. This means that five thousand million bricks would be required annually, and to secure this output all other work must cease for the time being, or two-and-a-half times the number of workmen engaged in pre-war days in house-building must be found to meet the demand, and even then it would probably be fifteen or twenty years before the actual shortage of houses was overtaken. At present seven million people were improperly housed. These facts, he argued, showed*lhe impossibility of producing sufficient brick houses, and the crying need for the instant and wider employment of wood. Although, as a matter of fact, there arc thousands of workers’ cottages constructed of wood at Home, the suggestion of erecting wooden houses, as a partial measure to meet the existing shortage, was being discussed with curious avidity by the English papers of six weeks ago, almost as though it were quite a new idea, and the existence of such houses, in British Columbia, Nova Scotia, and Norway was being quoted in proof of the argu-' ment that they were not so unsuited to the English climate as some people contended; Modern building regulations in many districts have hitherto required the outer walls of houses to be of brick of a defined thickness, and officialdom generally does not seem to have encouraged the idea of house construction in wood. In, the middle of October the Ministry of Health announced that as the result of investigations by a Special. Committee into the possibility of Using wooden .frame houses as part of the Government’s housing scheme, steps were being taken to relax the building regulations of local by-laws so as to permit the use of this material and others. This scheme contemplated apparently the importation, of Canadian “mill-cut” frame houses, and the use of such houses was surrounded by a good many regulations which would not tend to make them any cheaper. l Owing to the excessive price of timber—three times higher than before the war—and the scarcity of carpenters arid joiners, it was not expected that locally-con-structed wooden bungalows would be any cheaper than brick, and might, indeed, cost a little more. It was estimated that an English-made—not imported—wooden house, consisting of living room, kitchen, and three bedrooms, with bath-room and lighting, could be erected for about £730. The chief argument in favour of such homes is, however, that they could be built in considerable numbers concurrently with the erection 'of brick houses, new sources, of supply of material and labour being drawn upon. The increased cost of insurance would he discounted to some extent by the fact that the houses would be built singly and not ;n rows, and against the criticism that they would not last so long as brick houses may be put the aigument that their condition fifty or a hundred years hence is not of the least consequence to people who want to live in them now. Further, it has been proved that an artistic wooden bungalow can he built at Home in four weeks, whereas four months is often not long enough for a brick house. To us out here, to whom brick, and not wooden, houses are more or less uncommon, the argument and discussion that have been going on at Home over this question seem rather amusing. The position appears to offer a distinctly good opening to an enterprising young New Zealand architect.