A New War on Overcrowding Sir Hilton Young's new housing
statement is welcome as 'a 'promise of a great step forward by the Government. It has proceeded with much energy and success in its programme of slum-clearance, which will lead to the elimination of at least 280,000 insanitary houses and their replacement by 300,000 new houses. But this is the lesser part of the whole problem, which demands the construction of at least a million new dwellings. This is the question to which the Govern- ment is now turning. Just as the Minister of Health has already prevailed on the local authorities to survey the slums and schedule the dwellings to be demolished, so now he proposes to require them to survey their areas and discover where there is overcrowding, and ultimately to enforce laws or by-laws against it. The duty will be im- posed on them of relieving the pressure of population by constructing new dwellings near the spot where the tenants have been living. This will mean re-designing, building and re-conditioning in the centres of cities, the new building for the most part being upwards in the form of flats ; and the ,local-authorities will be able to draw upon a State subsidy. If the survey of overcrowding is as thorough as the survey of slum-areas, the result will be the building or the re-conditioning of many hundreds of thousands of dwellings. Whether the Government is right in entrust- ing this task exclusively to the local authorities is open to doubt ; and there seems to be no good reason why the authorities should not be equally encouraged to build dwellings outside as well as inside crowded cities. But to have it thus recognized that State assistance in housing cannot be confined to slum clearance is a great advance.
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