The Scandal of the Slums
ti Ow far has the country solved the housing problem LI which, in 1919, was exceptionally acute owing to the cessation of building during the War years ? What is the precise nature and extent of . the problem that remains ? To what extent will the fall in the cost of building and in the rate of interest on borrowed money enable the ordinary law of supply and demand to secure the building of the necessary houses in the next few years, without the aid of subsidies ? These arc some of the questions which Parliament will have to answer when it proceeds next month with the Committee stage of the Government's Housing Bill. On certain points there is fairly general agreement. Broadly speaking, the efforts of the last twelve years have produced a fair supply of houses at rents of from 20s. upwards in the London area and 15s. in the provinces, inclusive of rates. In future it is likely that, without subsidy, houses at lower rents will be built. The Minister of Health hopes that with the aid of guaranteed loans from Building Societies houses at rents as low as 10s. in the provinces and somewhat more in the London area will be built by private enterprise. This, however, is more debatable. But in any case it is common ground that, in the words of Sir. Hilton Young, " the problem of our slums has hardly yet been scratched," and that the re-housing of those living in slums can only be accom- plished with the aid of subsidies.
There are no exact estimates available to indicate with accuracy how large this slum problem is, but sufficient data exist to furnish a basis for a rough estimate which can be accepted with some confidence. The slum problem is really four-fold : (a) There are the unhealthy areas where no solution can be arrived at short of complete clearance and re- building ;
(b) Outside these areas are individual old, worn-out houses, where demolition and the re-housing of the displaced families is necessary ;
. (c) There are the houses which, while not being so bad as to necessitate demolition, nevertheless require such substantial reconditioning as to involve expendi- ture of a.capital nature ; (d) Lastly there are houses which, _while reasonably satisfactory if not overcrowded, are nevertheless occupied by two or more families, thus producing slum conditions..
Let us consider the problems these present.
First as regards the unhealthy areas : Within the boundaries of the London County Council there are at least 160,000 persons living in the worst of such areas, and to clear them and re-house the displaced population would involve the building of 40,000 tenements. In the city of Leeds there are 67,000 back-to-back houses, of which at least 33,000 are so bad that they should be immediately pulled down and the families re-housed. ln ,Birmingham there are at least 80,000 such houses. Thus in these three cities alone there are about 100,000 dwellings that should be demolished and the inmates re-housed,. The aggregate population of these cities represents' one-sixth of the population of England and Wales. It is thus a reasonable and conservative estimate to suggest that the clearance of unhealthy areas and the re-housing of the displaced population would amount to something approaching 400,000. In. addition to these there are considerable numbers of individual houses which, though not in the slum areas, ought to be demolished. Thus at least half a million houses in all should be demol- ished and replaced by new dwellings. That is the measure of the adequacy of the Government's programme of 12,000 houses a year in the slums.
No statistical data are available to form a reliable estimate of the number of houses in class (c) above, namely those which require complete reconditioning. But Sir Austen Chamberlain's remarks with regard to conditions in his own constituency—by no means the worst part of Birmingham, while Birmingham is by no means the worst housed city in the country—give some indication of the magnitude of this part of the problem. There remains the question of the overcrowding of the poorest. In houses originally designed for one family, two or more families are now living. Only one-third of the families of London, rich and poor, live in a self- contained house or flat, while one-third are living three or more families to a dwelling. In Manchester and other large provincial cities the overcrowding figures, though not so formidable, are nevertheless substantial. The surveys which have been prepared in various big towns, together with the Census, reveal a state of overcrowding which seems almost incredible when we remember the building activity of the last ten years. In London over 2,000 families of six persons or more are living in a single room each. Moreover, while the Census shows that the number of persons living two or more to a room has slightly decreased, in London, Leeds and other big cities the number living three o• more to a room has actually increased during the last decade. One or two actual examples will indicate what housing conditions in Great Britain to-day are.
In Manchester, in a single room live a father, mother, a boy and four girls. In Bristol, one house, containing twelve rooms, is occupied by forty-five people, grouped in ten families. In Liverpool, a nine-roomed house is occupied by eight families. In Edinburgh, a small, one- roomed dwelling suitable for two persons was found to be occupied by a man and his wife, four daughters and three sons. While a certain proportion of the overcrowding can be relieved by the provision of the new, unsubsidized dwellings to which we are encouraged to look forward, a large proportion of those living in overcrowded conditions are unable to pay rents of 10s. a week.
There is a problem here totally different in magnitude and urgency from anything the Government's mild palliatives would suggest—a slum problem demanding an ad hoc slum programme quite distinct from the general building programme, which is now to be left to the doubt- ful hazards of private enterprise. A sharp acceleration in the rate of clearing slum areas is needed, with much more adequate provision for reconditioning than was contained in the 1980 Act, and with the provision of subsidies to local authorities to enable them to deal with over-
crowding in houses which are not actually ." slum-dwell- ings " in the technical sense.
Obviously such a programme would cost money, but considerably less money than any gross estimate would suggest, if we are to accept as anything like accurate Sir Raymond Unwin's computation that the erection of every new house would mean saving at least £80 in unemploy- ment pay to building trade workers. Moreover, to banish sickness and maintain health is a financial economy in itself, and there is no more potent cause of ill-health than
slum conditions. The claim that normal working-class houses can now to a large extent be built without subsidy affords a new reason for making a far more progressive attack upon the slums than has been possible during the period when the attention of local authorities has been devoted almost entirely to providing new dwellings to meet the exceptional shortage created by the War. The coming debate on the Housing Bill will give an opportunity for pressing . that contention on the Government.
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