[To the Editor of THE SPECTATOR.]
SIR,—In spite of the energetic and wisely directed efforts of the Housing Committee of our Bristol City Council in attack- ing the post-War housing problem, the urgent need for still more houses here confirms all that is said in the recent article in your paper.
In 1931 a Report on the Housing Needs of Bristol under the Greenwood Act was compiled from a survey made by Mr. H. R. Burrows, M.C., B.Com., and issued by the local branch of the Garden Cities and Town Planning Association. (Copies may be obtained at is. each from the writer of this letter.) Taking as a sample 447 houses in areas typical of others he concluded that some 10,000 were needed to replace houses beyond repair or to relieve overcrowding in the poorer dis- tricts of the city.'
• Since that Report was issued some 4,000 houses have been built by the local authority, a figure which reflects great credit on the Housing Committee, but if we assume (and it is a generous estimate) that one-half of these haVe gone to relieve overcrowding, it will be seen that a large problem still remains.
Now according to the Government's new Housing Bill, private enterprise will be left to provide all but the houses needed for clearing the slums. But if the figures mentioned by Sir Hilton Young on the occasion of the second reading of the Bill are not immensely expanded, no appreciable effect will be made on our slum problem or on that of overcrowding, for the sum mentioned by him would provide only 12,000 houses annually for the whole country, of which Bristol's share would be some one hundred and forty !
To quote the pamphlet referred to above, it is seldom realized that " it has never paid private enterprise adequately to house the poorer paid workers. Builder after builder failed in the early years of this century and sold his houses at a heavy loss to new-comers who were then able to let the houses at low rents. Even then, the rents were above the .means of the very poorest, who made up the rent by sub-letting and so created overcrowding."
By all means let private enterprise provide houses for all who can afford them. It scene, clear, however, that if only our City Council could be allowed to continue and increase its excellent work of building small houses at low rents to accom- modate families able and willing to move to the suburbs and, by making demolition orders on the unfit houses to enable the families so dispossessed to move into the houses vacated by th new suburbans, a grading-up system would operate and the slums could be cleared.-1 am, Sir,. &c.,
7 Sian Hill, Clifton, Bristol.
MILLICENT M. BALK.
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