Britain's Housing Needs
THE Housing Census of 1921 gave the number of houses in England and Wales as 7,979,000. The number in 1939 was about
11,200,000, and of these Dr. Elsas estimates that 3,300,000 were at least eighty years old, and another 1,400,000 at least sixty years old. New York's peacetime habit of pulling down and rebuilding
every ten years (due as it is to special conditions) is one not to be emulated ; but only the housewife in these serviceless days knows what it means in discomfort, unnecessary labour and fatigue and denial of amenities to which invention entitles her, that 4o per cent. of our families live in houses now over sixty-five years old.
Between 1920 and 1932, 2,000,000 only of the 2,300,000 houses required to replace derelict houses and provide homes for newly
formed families were built. During the 'thirties, the cost of building
fell to roughly a third of what it had been in 1920, and there was a boom in building. Yet " at the outbreak of the war there was still a large number of unfit houses to be replaced ; the campaign for the abatement of overcrowding was not finished. In rural housing, needs were far from being satisfied. There was also a growing demand for small and inexpensive dwellings for aged couples, single people, and newly married couples."
The war stopped house-building, and resulted in the destruction of 202,000 houses and the damage of 4,328,000 more by enemy
action, and the steady deterioration of the rest through lack of maintenance. Dr. Elsas estimates that between 1945 and 1965, 340,000 to 375,000 dwellings will have to be built every year if we are to be rid of urban and rural slums and overcrowding by the latter year. Since an average of 334,0o0 houses was built each year from 1934 to 1939, this figure is clearly not impossible of achieve- ment. But the need would not end there: "Do not let us be rash in concluding that even if numerically there are eventually sufficient dwellings to house the population . . . such an event must bring about a rapid decline in housing demand and therefore in building."
If after 1965 dwellings were replaced after sixty years (and why not more often than that?), 190,000 would be needed annually for
replacement, plus 35,00o new buildings. An active building industry stimulates innumerable other trades. Any Government, therefore, which aims at maintaining full employment should encourage an ordered replacement of houses after a reasonable lapse of time.
Dr. Elsas does not touch on the desirability of building only houses of good design, well insulated for sound, and of a construc- tion that will endure satisfactorily for the full time they are likely to be in use ; nor on that of selecting certain among our eighteenth and nineteenth century houses for careful preservation on account of their graciousness and their inspiration to the architect. But these are important points in the formulation of a sound housing policy. One of the reasons that keeps people in slums, to the detriment of their own and their children's health and therefore usefulness to society, is poverty—though he needs more rooms, the man with a large family can afford to pay for less accommodation than his neighbour with- a small family. In the lower income groups, Dr. Elsas considers that families with children should be provided with the requisite accommodation for decency at a rent assessed as a percentage of the amount left after a subsistence minimum has been subtracted from the total income. His national rent subsidy scheme deserves study by all those anxious to see none but good
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