The Scandal of the Slum
The idea of a National Housing Corporations floated some time ago by Sir Raymond Unwin and discussed more fully at a conference presided over by Sir Austen Chamberlain on Tuesday, both deserves and demands a good deal further exploration. There is no doubt a place for such a body between the Government, in whose hands responsibility for the
provision of houses must ultimately rest, and the private builder, to whom, with financial aid from the building societies, the task of furnishing houses is now to be entrusted. But precisely how such a public utility institution would work on a national scale, and -what powers it would enjoy, has still to be decided. The urgent problem is the slum. Nothing, as Sir Enoch Hill observed the other day, short of dynamite will serve in some localities, and it is exactly there that
private enterprise is likely to fail to meet the need in the matter of re-housing. The Government's Housing Bill is utterly inadequate as regards the slum, and if a public utility corporation can do anything to make good its deficiencies the project will deserve all possible support. But the problem is one that needs something more than private effort for its solution. * * * *
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