Sense and Nonsense in Housing
Behind the modern frontage of Messrs. John Lewis in Oxford Street, four early nineteenth-century terraced houses have been planted among the garden furniture. In the first, Mrs. Whittington, of Ealing Studios, with the assistance of their expert in man-spun cobwebs and their almost offensively accurate imagination, have reproduced the decor and appur- tenances of such a house before conversion.' Three floors, two rooms on each; but one cold tap; an unused and unusable parlour; gaslight, photographs and an enormous number of antimacassars, demonstrate the waste of space and the expense of effort that goes into this house in its native condition. The next two houses have been converted to form three self-con- tained flats, one on each floor.. The act of conversion seems to be admirably performed at a cost, per flat, of £785. Of this, the landlord may be reimbursed for half (up to a maximum of £400 per dwelling under 1949 legislation) from the local authorities, who in turn will be reimbursed up to 75 per cent. from the Exchequer. The interior decoration is another matter. Spotted muslin, pale grey and yellow wallpapers, chintz lamp shades, plants that creep and crawl around an artificial trellis on the wall, represent somebody's conception of how a working man, his wife and two children (or, alternatively, a couple living on £10 to £14 a week with their ' teen-age' child) could improve their status in life with the aid of Taste. In fact, in this experiment as in the Government's housing policy as a whole, there is something useful and something false. It is obviously useful to begin to concentrate on the problem of the six million houses in Britain over sixty years old. It is equally-useful that the Government should beam some inspira- tion on to the local authorities who, for better or for worse, execute so much of its housing programme. But is it not also time that somebody regarded houses as an economic rather than a moral problem and questioned the principle of grants to landlords for converted buildings which are subsequently to be let for a controlled ' rent ?
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