THE SCANDAL OF THE SLUMS

[To the Editor of ISM SPECTATOR.] SIR,—In your article " The Scandal of the Slums " in last week's issue you say there are at least 160,000 persons living in the worst of such areas (boundaries of the London County Council) and to clear them and rehouse the displaced popula- tion would involve the building of 40,000 tenements.

I should like to stress the fact that this alludes to over-

crowded families simply and at the accepted rate of over- crowding, i.e., in excess of 2.5 persons per room. In estimating the number of fresh homes that we require at the present time two important considerations need to be taken into account.

(1) There is a good deal of " social " as well as " legal "

overcrowding, e.g., mixing of the sexes in the ear,y of older children, parents obliged to share a room with a growing child• of say more than seven years old, &c. There is no adequate means of ascertaining the extent of this at present, but it must involve a substantial addition to the figures of legal over-• crowding which, as the last census reveals, certainly involves at least 40,000 families.

(2) No unfit houses (insanitary, dilapidated, &c.) within or

without definitely slum areas are included in this category unless also overcrowded. Now in London there are, it is computed, 30,000 basement dwellings, most or all of which are totally unfit for human habitation, and they represent only a tithe of the dwellings which are or are likely to be condemned quite apart from overcrowding.

It is fairly clear therefore that the total number of families requiring fresh accommodation is unlikely to be much less than 60,000 in the London area alone.

If we are to cope with this problem with any prospect of success in the course of a generation there are three conceivable policies which we might adopt.

(1) To set about the mass production of houses on " Fordist " lines either under the Ministry of Health or a National Housing Authority reinforced by special transport facilities where required.

(2) To pursue a Russian rather than an American example and endeavour in a given period to supply houses in some definite relationship to industry in a new industrial plan. This would in effect be a long term policy, and its deficiencies would have to be made good in the interval caused by its elaboration by a shorter term policy of " running up " tem- porary accommodation on the cheapest possible lines.

But there is (8) a less ambitious course of supplying the houses where and as they are required. This method depends even more than the others upon precise information being available, and it is regrettable that such information has not been collected during the past decade.

For instance, in this borough as in most others of a similar description, there are several classes of people whose needs require consideration.

(a) Those who could pay a rental of from 8s. to 15s. a week, but cannot afford to pay travelling money as well.

(b) Those who do not work in or near the borough but cannot get accommodation near their workplace, and so cling on to the home, however poor, that they do possess. In the work- places volume of the 1921 Census it was revealed that more than 15,000 persons travelled from the borough a distance exceeding a 2d. fare each way to work every day.

(c) Those the nature or hours of whose work compel them to live in the neighbourhood.

(d) Those who could move into more expensive accommoda- tion whilst there are multiple earnings in the family, but shrink from any big move in view of the ephemeral nature of such earnings (owing to marriage of children, &c.). (e) The unemployed.

On the other hand it is only owing to the Census that we have any accurate knowledge of the extent of overcrowding, and chiefly through private surveys that we have any of the volume of insanitary, basement, and dilapidated dwellings:

I suggest that the time has come when the Local Authorities might well obtain more precise information on both these aspects of the problem.

It will be apparent to anyone that if there are in a particular borough 5,000 families needing fresh accommodation it will make a considerable difference whether 3,500 of them must be rehoused in the immediate vicinity and 1,500 can be moved out to new estates beyond the perimeter, or whether the figures in the two cases are reversed.—I am, Sir, &e.,

Joins MARTIN, Chairman, Southwark Housing Association.

24 Steedman Street, lValworth Road, S.E. 17.