HOUSING REFORM AND ITS COST.
(AIM customary procedure in matters of social improve- kJ meat runs on well-defined lines. When the need of doing something in this direction is first recognised, we are naturally impressed by the difference of local circum- stances, and the difficulty of laying down any rules that shall be equally applicable to all parts of the country. From this dilemma there is an obvious way of escape. Local conditions must be best understood by those who live among them. The sense of a public want secures the passing of a general Act of Parliament ; the consciousness of our want of acquaintance with the objects for which we are legislating suggests the prudence of leaving the newly made law to be applied by those who are better informed than ourselves. The statute creates large powers of remedying abuses, but it leaves it to the local authorities to say whether these powers shall be used. By and by comes the discovery that the authorities in question are less anxious than we supposed to carry out the improve- ments for which we have placed the means at their disposal. Their knowledge of local wants is balanced, often more than balanced, by their appreciation of local obstacles. In this way there grows up a demand for further legis- lation. A little examination shows that the necessary powers already exist; what is absent is the necessary readiness to use them in those to whom the application of them has been entrusted. The natural thing to do, there- fore, is to transfer that discretion to another and a more enlightened authority. This method of legislation has one obvious weakness. In the first instance, the knowledge that the responsibility will rest with the local authorities may. make Parliament careless as regards the measure and character of the powers it creates, and when at a later stage these powers are made universal, they may turn out to have consequences which were not fully foreseen. It is so; easy to make that compulsory which at first was optional that we may not stop to consider whether, had we con- te'xnplated this step at starting, we should have given the earlier Act the precise shape it wears.
The first clause of Mr. Burns's Housing, Town Planning, &c., Bill is cast in the, familiar form. It provides that Part III. of the Housing of the Working Classes Act of 1890 shall extend to and take effect in every place for which it has not been adopted as if it had been adopted. When we turn to this third part of the earlier Act we find that it is concerned with the provision of lodging-houses for the working classes, that under the term lodging-houses is included "separate houses or cottages," and that "the expression cottage may include a garden of not more than half an acre." The procedure under this Act leaves its application in the first instance to the rural sanitary authority in each district. If this authority wishes to adopt the Act, it must apply to the County Council for permission to do so ; and. -if the County Council, after holding an inquiry on the spot, is of opinion that the accommodation which the rural sanitary authority wishes to provide is necessary for the proper housing of the working classes, and that it is prudent for the local authority to pro- vide it," having regard to the liability which will be incurred by the rates," it may grant the certificate without which the rural sanitary authority cannot carry out its scheme. The present Bill substitutes an application to the Local Government Board for that to the County Council, and gives to "any four inhabitant householders" of the parish the right to invoke its intervention. Whenever the neces- sary four householders complain to the Local Government Ptoard that the local authority have failed to exercise the powers vested in them by the Act of 1890, the Board may, after holding a local inquiry, declare the local authority to be in default, and direct that authority to carry out the works mentioned in the Order, and this direction may be enforced by mandamus. This extension of the earlier Act may have large consequences. There are few country parishes, probably, where the accommodation for the working classes is adequate alike in amount and in character, and the cases in which four resident inhabitant householders will be found willing to call in the services of the Local Government Board are likely to be very much more numerous than when the aid invoked is that of a local body, elected possibly for the sole object of keeping down the rates. Nor is it only Part III. of the principal Act that is affected by the present Bill. Part I. of that Act arms the urban local authorities with power to declare any houses, courts, or alleys within their jurisdiction unfit for human habita- tion, to pronounce the narrowness, closeness, bad arrangement, or the bad conditions of the streets or houses, or the want of light, air, ventilation, or proper conveniences, or any other sanitary defects, dangerous to the health of the inhabitants, and thereupon to make a scheme for the improvement of the condemned area. By Clause XII. of Mr. Burns's Bill the Local Government Board may make an Order requiring the local authority to carry out any of the works referred to in Part L of the principal Act. There is a similar provision for vesting the power of enforcing the closing and demolition of unhealthy houses at present exercised by the local authority in the Local Government Board, and Orders made under either of these heads may also be enforced by mandamus. Apparently the four inhabitant householders will have no locus stancli under this clause; but any .serious and well- grounded complaint will have a much better chance of being listened to when it is made to a central authority with a Parliamentary chief than when it has to take its chance of getting the ear of a locally elected body.
We have little fault to find with these provisions. It is matter of common knowledge that all over the country there are houses inhabited which are not fit for habitation, and that in almost every large town there are areas crowded with human beings which supply none of the conditions necessary to healthy life. It is equally notorious that the authorities to which the existing law commits the duty of dealing with these cases do for various reasons leave that duty unperformed. There is hardly a medical officer of health, probably, who would not admit, if challenged, that he allows case after case of this kind to go unreported because he knows that the local authority will not act on his recommendation, and that by pressing unwelcome advice on them he will only injure his chance of being listened to on other occasions. Nor do we question that in these respects Mr. Burns's Bill is likely to have excellent results. But in practice it seldom answers to dissociate results, however good, from the cost at which they are obtained. It is now proposed to make the central authority the governing force in the settlement of the housing question, and it can hardly. be denied that the experience of seventeen years has made the necessity of such a change evident. The difficulties in, the way of effective action are so grave that the local authorities shrink from encountering them. They admit the existence of the evil, but they plead—or, rather, they would plead if they spoke at all—that if they attempt to cure it they will only provoke worse evils still. When the demolition of unhealthy houses is certain to leave their inhabitants homeless, it is very hard to induce a local authority to take the steps which lead to Mich a result. It is true there 'are valuable provisions in the thirteenth and fourteenth clauses of the Bill for compelling owners to put their houses in order, and it is probable that these provisions will be strengthened in Committee. But a large part of the cost of im- provements, particularly in large areas, will necessarily fall on the community, and it is certainly open to question whether the distribution of the burden, which at present is perfectly just, will be equally so when this Bill becomes law. So long as the decision whether an Act of Parlia- ment shall be adopted in a particular district is vested in the local authority, it is only reasonable that they should bear the cost of improvements which they have undertaken of their own free will. But when these improvements are forced upon them by a superior authority, when they are left no choice in the matter, when the direction hitherto given them to consider whether, "having regard to the liability which will be incurred by the rates, it' is under all the circumstances prudent" to do what the needs of the district require disappears, and the decision is left absolutely to the Local , Government Board, the situation is changed. Local authorities are well accus- tomed to having to find their share of a national burden. In future they will have to find the whole of a purely local burden which yet is imposed, not by any local body, but by Parliament. If the local circumstances were everywhere the same, there might not be much force in this distinction. Whether the money comes from the rates or from the taxes, it comes out of the pockets of much the same persons. But as regards the housing of the working classes, the circumstances of one district may bear very little likeness to those of another. The rates of a parish in which there is .overcrowding on a great scale, or in which, though there are houses in sufficient quantity, the majority of them are not fit to be lived in, mar .be terribly high when compared with the financial capacity of the ratepayers, and yet be altogether in- sufficient to meet the expenditure ordered by the Local Government Board. In such a case as this it does seem that the central authority should bear some part of the burden which it now lays upon the locality, and that the discharge of a very costly duty should be somewhat lightened in the interest of those on whom, in the absence of any such alleviation, it must press with very disturbing force.
We have not left ourselves any space to deal with Part II. of the Bill, which contains the new and interesting provisions relating to the planning and extension of towns. We may say generally, however, that our attitude towards these provisions is distinctly sympathetic, and that we look forward to the discussion of them in Parliament with very favourable expectations.
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