Conservatives and Housing
The report on Housing Policy issued by the Housing Sub-Com- mittee of the Conservative Party on Tuesday, if it did nothing else, would have performed a valuable service in indicating the magni- tude of the problem to be faced and some of the less obvious difficulties that will have to be surmounted. There is clearly, for example, some incompatibility between house-ownership as an aim and mobility of labour as an aim, pointing to the need for the con- struction of a considerable number of houses to be let rather than sold. Another useful, if not entirely original, feature of the report is the division of the housing programme into three phases, an emergency period during which everyone must be housed somehow, an intermediate period devoted to slum clearance and the relief of overcrowding, and a long-term period in which, when once there are enough houses for everyone and a surplus to facilitate mobility, quality can be steadily improved and standards raised. The analysis is useful, but it will obviously be sufficient for the moment to concentrate on the first, or emergency, period, and in this connexion the report presents the Government with a searching challenge by stipulating for the erection of 750,000 houses in the first two years after the war, as against the Government's programme of 300,000. The sub-committee believes the attainment of the larger number possible, given a common-sense departure from traditional methods of construction, which will permit the erection not of mere temporary accommodation, but of decent and reasonably permanent houses. Ambitious as this programme is, there is no reason why a country which has achieved the all but impossible in the field of war-production should not realise it, provided exnensP could be as largely disregarded as it is in the war emergency. That, however, is neither desirable nor possible, and it is on the financial side, in regard particularly to the allocation of subsidies, that the Conser- vative report needs the closest scrutiny. But on any showing it is an important and stimulating document.
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