TOPICS OF THE DAY
THE CRIME OF THE SLUM
THE slum problem is still with us, but I am delighted to see what a strong and wholesome movement of public opinion there has been on the whole matter since the Spectator's article of November 22nd. We then dared to tell the country, in Cromwell's words, that here was a matter in which the nation would have to answer to God, and that its responsibility for tolerating the existence of the slums instead of decreeing their abolition—or rather, since we do theoretically decree their abolition, for permitting our decrees to go unaccomplished—could not be evaded.
We must act, and act with rapidity and boldness. Unless and until we act in regard to the slums as we act in the case of the sale of putrid fish or putrid meat or poisonous drugs and poisonous food, we, as a nation, are guilty of a great crime. And remember that in the case of slums the crime is much worse than the ordinary crime of manslaughter. The moral evils of the slum are greater than the physical evils. The slums carry their punishment with them, and apply it to those who tolerate them, not merely by physical epidemics, but by social and moral contamination. Who can wonder at, and who can blame, the revolutionaries who arise from the slums ? Theirs is an excusable, almost a natural and necessary, reaction against an intolerable environment. But here one must enter a caveat. I mean by a slum something wholly different from a poor house, or an uncomfortable house, or a small house with a depressing environment. Those bad conditions—the great shortage of houses, and the great expense of housing (not to mention the ghastly aggravation of a smoke-polluted sky) are matters of the gravest moment, indeed among the gravest that confront us. But they are not the slum problem. The slum problem is something that must be lifted right out of the housing problem and dealt with separately and apart. In no other way shall we get rid of this crying evil. We must create a new machinery for dealing with the slum— that is, for dealing with the houses and the areas which have been condemned as unfit for human habitation, or which would be so condemned if the sanitary inspectors dared speak out, or, at all events, if they had not been driven to despair by feeling that they were hitting their heads against a brick wall.
The moment a house or area has become "unfit for human habitation ”— not in a pedantic but in the broad and common-sense definition of that term--human habi- tation therein must cease as rapidly as possible—i.e., at .a fixed date. I would put the maximum time at which it must cease at two months from the ascer- tainment of unfitness. I will go further. From the moment of the declaration of unfitness for human habita- tion I would make it a penal offence for any landlord to receive rents or to make any form of profit out of such property. It should further be an offence for any tenant to pay rent either to a landlord or to a middleman, or as a lodger, for the right to inhabit a condemned structure. Rents due from the inhabitants should only be payable to, or be collected by, the public authority empowered to deal with the matter. The rents till demolition took place should be ear-marked for a compassionate fund to be used in specially hard cases caused by eviction.
. Then would come the question of re-housing.- That must be done—as the Spectator has so often said—by a proper organization of emergency houses, whether of wood, or steel, or any other material. Emergency re- housing must, of course, be adequate and itself sanitary. It is no good to destroy one slum and make another. . • In this context we may note the manifesto signed by the leaders of the Municipal Reform Party and others put forth by the London Municipal Society. They point out what the L.C.C. wanted to do and hoped to do, and how various influences, including, curiously enough, the action of the Ministry of Health, has prevented a really comprehensive and effective treatment of the slum problem. The manifesto deals with the special difficulty that men must live where they work, and shows how this leads to overcrowding. After stating this and other obstacles, the manifesto declares that :
"Above all, what stands in the way of speedy action is the cumbersome and dilatory procedure involved in the acquisition by local authorities of insanitary property. On the average, at least eight years elapse between the first step to abolish the slum and the completion cf the new dwellings. • - • "Added to this slow execution of sjum clearances—for which the local authorities are not responsible—we have the delays resulting from a too-rigid administration of he by-lairs and regulations of the Ministry of Health, and sometimes of the London. County Council. It is safe to say that if the too-meticulous application of Government Department rules were abolished, slum clearance schemes would make more rapid progress, and the overcrowded be rehoused where they formerly lived, or near by.
" As a typical example of the difficulties of improving insanitary areas, we may quote the case of the Prusom Street (Wapping) Scheme. This slum area was reported as unfit for habitation in June, 1920. The London County Council approved a scheme for clearance in February,- 1923. This was duly submitted to the Minister of Health for confirmation. A public local inquiry was held in November, 1923. The Minister of Health, however, so altered and cut down the scheme that the London County Council and the Stepney Borough Council have made strong protests against what they consider is the unjustifiable alteration by the Ministry of Health of a scheme which has been produced after four years' work under great difficulties to meet the special needs of the district. An order sanctioning an altered and restricted scheme was finally issued in August, 1924."
That is, we believe, a very just and discerning view. And now, what is the remedy ? The remedy (but here I speak again merely for the slum part of the problem, and not for housing in general) is to create a body of Commis- sioners for dealing with insanitary houses and areas throughout the, country. It will be the duty of mimicipal authorities whenever a building or area is declared to be unfit for human habitation to report at once to the Com- missioners. On this the Commissioners will act at once. When they are satisfied that no mistake has been made, and that the buildings are unfit for human habitation, they will declare the houses or area unfit, and on their having done so, all powers for dealing with the area will vest in them. They will be armed with powers, such as the War Office possessed during the War, to take over, temporarily, lands which are not now occupied, and to place on them emergency houses to which the people of the slum area can be removed. They must, of course, choose such lands as near as possible to the condemned buildings or area. They should be given power for this purpose to requisition parks or, open spaces. • They should then clear the area of its present inhabi- tants and re-house them in emergency. and temporary buildings. . That done, they should hand back the cleared area either to the landlord or to the municipality to be dealt with as they think best, provided always that they do not erect on the place in question a new slum, or, again, that they do not .devote the area which was a place of human habitation to other than housing 'uses—unless they are given special leave from the Commissioners to do so. . If precautions of this kind were not taken, there might be cases in which it might be an advantage to a man to own slums. In that way he would get a valuable piece , of building land. now - encumbered- by insanitary houses banded back to him in better condition. There must be no premium on the maintenance of slums.
An objection which will, of course, be raised (and in a sense be quite properly raised) to this plan will be that the Commissioners for dealing with insanitary lands will be overwhelmed with applications from every part of the country,, and that this will hinder them in a proper experimental progress. We agree. Therefore, the Commissioners should have the power to select their areas for -first action. At the same time we would allow them a• pan i pa,ssu method of procedure. For example, we can imagine that the first thing that the Commissioners would do would be to deal with the Glasgow slums.
Simultaneously, however, they might be acting experimentally in London. In this context, we desire to express our satisfaction at the action of the Minister of Health, Mr. Neville Chamberlain, in organizing local exhibitions of the emergency steel _houses designed. by Lord Weir. There is nothing better than exhibitions to accustom people to a new idea. As I found in the case of the Cheap. Cottages Exhibition, many people who come to an exhibition to curse and to show what folly the whole thing is, when they see imagination converted into reality go away to pray for more invention and more practice.
I have one more thing to say by way of postscript. There is no reason why a body of Commissioners with supreme powers such as I have suggested should not very often use the municipal authorities as their instru- ments for building emergency houses. Finally, let them borrow as their special instruments, three or four com- panies of the Royal Engineers, and so prove that the Army has peace as well as war uses.
J. Si. Lon STRACILEY.
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