Houses for the Poorest There are grounds for receiving with
some reservations Sir Hilton Young's recent statement that " of the 120,781 houses built by private enterprise in the six months to March 31st, 1934, no less than 44,754 were . . . houses of the type appropriate for lower paid wage-earners." What does lower paid wage-earners mean ? The wage- earners whose needs are urgent are those who cannot pay more than 10s. a week, rates included, and there is very grave reason to doubt whether their requirements are being met on any substantial scale anywhere, par- ticularly since the majority of them want to rent their houses and not to buy them. Under the new Housing Bill foreshadowed by Lord Halifax a subsidy is to be available wherever the cost of re-housing is considered to be specially high. That clause would go far to meeting the needs of the situation if it could be broadened so as to establish the principle that a subsidy would be granted in cases where it was essential to provide houses for a maximum rent of 10s. a week and shown to be impossible to achieve that without such State assistance. Whatever the method chosen—and in this and other sections of the housing field the work of public utility societies ought to be given every encouragement—it is vital that the Government should face up to the needs of the lowest paid among the workers. No statistics so far Published give evidence that that is being done.
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