A Few More Houses
The March contribution to the solution of the housing problem in England and Wales was not impressive-1,458 permanent houses and 4,029 temporary houses. In addition, 7,663 families were found homes in existing premises. The most that can be said for this was that it was a little better than February's performance. Those whose determination to count their blessings carries them beyond houses which are to houses which are to be will be cheered to find that the number of permanent and temporary houses under construction went up by over 19,000 in March and that the number of sites completed during the month was nearly 32,000. But these blessings have another aspect. As the rate of building increases with the finer weather the drain on stocks of materials will almost certainly exceed the inflow of new production, and the growing building labour force (624,500 on March 31st) may find itself without enough bricks and mortar to keep the job going. In view of last month's revelation that brick production was far below demand, only a miracle can prevent an acute shortage from developing. Equally dismal forebodings about cement, timber, paint and so on are at least equally justified by the known fact that the " tooling-up " part of the building programme has only recently been given close attention. Production bottle- necks have been broken before and they will no doubt be broken again. But until that happens work on many thousands of houses cannot begin ; and the process of building still takes a long time. It is difficult to see how any real impression can be made upon the shortage this year.
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