SHELTERING OF HOMELESS

Southland Times, Issue 24239, 24 September 1940, Page 5

SHELTERING OF HOMELESS

Responsibility Taken By Government GREAT IMPROVEMENT IN ARRANGEMENTS (British Official Wireless) RUGBY, September 22. The Minister of Health, Mr Malcolm MacDonald, described the Government’s plans for sheltering citizens who' have lost their homes through the senseless, brutal German air attacks. “The care of those made homeless amid the bombardment of the air-raids is now a major activity of the Government,” said Mr MacDonald. “Many agencies are helping in the work. Local authorities have an important part to play and countless citizens are giving assistance in one way or another. But the main responsibility for seeing that those who are ejected from their homes are quickly provided with another roof and with food, clothing and other necessities rests fairly and squarely upon the Government itself. “Generally speaking, our plans worked reasonably well through all the widely scattered raids on Britain until the violent bombings of London a fortnight ago. Then the first day or two of that experience revealed some faults in our plans. One important thing in war is to preserve an alert eye and mind to detect mistakes as soon as they are apparent, to correct them swiftly and to turn them to advantage. “So, in the past two weeks we have greatly improved our arrangements for looking after the homeless,” Mr MacDonald continued. “Some boroughs have received a heavier weight of attack than others and have at times found their centres temporarily crammed to capacity. Aid then comes from other boroughs. “There are omnibuses to take people from the centres in the more hardlypressed boroughs to centres in those which have been less severely hit In all these movements borough boundaries have been swept aside. Different areas are helping each other. The

London defence region, which is even wider than that of the London County Council, is being treated as a whole. For people who cannot find new dwellings for themselves an official billeting officer must find billets. NO RIGID BOUNDARIES “Here again there are no rigid boundaries between borough and borough and county and county. Most people from the most heavily-bombed areas in London have recently been billeted widely outside their own boroughs. This was done either by billeting people in other households or else by putting them | into unoccupied houses.

“All local authorities have full powers to requisition empty houses for this purpose and many have been exercising their powers energetically for some time. For instance, I asked the authorities of 14 London boroughs where there are the largest numbers of suitable empty houses, to requisition those places up to capacity to accommodate more than 20,000 persons lest that should be required, which is not the case at present. The local authority can take over furnished houses if they like, or they can requisition an unfurnished house and themselves acquire from Government stock or by their own purchases the furniture required for the use of incoming householders.

My friend the Chancellor of the Exchequer foots the bill.

“The migration of homeless families into these residences is now proceeding, but we must never ignore the human factors in this situation. Often those who have been turned out of house and home by enemy action and who could be housed elsewhere are reluctant to leave their own locality. Over and over again omnibuses have waited to take them away, but they have declined to go. This solid refusal to budge from the danger zone is partly a reminder of the average Englishman’s deep sentiment rooting in the locality of his own home and partly evidence of how little these nightly bombings have shaken the nerve of those who are victims of its fierce spite.

“If our armies were engaged around you with the enemy you would not hesitate to give whatever shelter and succour lay in your power to our soldiers,” concluded the Minister. "But these London citizens are soldiers, they are front-line troops, they are our comrades who have shown coolness and valour under fire. They have been in battle like our airmen and our sailors and our men of Calais and Dunkirk. And that spirit has already inflicted defeat on the enemy. Sustain and sue- - cour them. We are all in this business together, and it is by the firm Union of the whole nation that our cause will prevail.”