THE HOUSE CRISIS.

Taranaki Daily News, 6 September 1919, Page 10

THE HOUSE CRISIS.

ACUTE IN AMERICA. New York, July 1. The straits to which many families are reduced at present in large cities throughout the United States, through restrictions in building 6perations during the war and other causes, are without precedent in the history of this country. In. a number of cities in the East and Middle West States, only those owning their own. homes feel sure of keeping a home for any length of time. In a recent statement issued at Washington Secretary of Labor Wilson said that there was a nation-wide shortage of 1,000,000 homes, and urged that cities and large business interests give assistance to plans for building new homes. This, he saiif; will not only provide much buffer employment at a time when it it sorely, needed, but it will also put up a great barrier to the efforts of radical agitators. "I have found," he added, "that a man who owns his home is the least suspectible to the so-called Bolshevist doctrine and is about the last man to join in the industrial disturbances fomented by the radical agitators." He gave the approximate number of families in various cities of thirteen Eastern and Middle Western States needing home accommodations, the largest number, 75,000, being in New York City, and the lowest, 100, being in Orange, N..1. In Detroit, Mich., 30,000 and in Chicago, 111., 12,000 families needed home accommodations.

All dwelling plans of the United States Housing Corporation have been turned over for public use and Secretary Wilson urged that big interests adopt the housing corporation's principles, on which homes can be bought by working men on the installment plan, as a means of solving the labor problem. The passage of the Bill proposed by the labor department establishing home loan banks through which loans can bo made to prospective home builders, will be strongly urged in the next Congress. Meantime thl high cost of labor and building materials, now that the building restrictions are removed, tend to delay the necessary building of homes and apartment houses. In suburban districts of Eastern cities so many houses are changing proprietors that tenants coming to a new house never can know how long they will be permitted to remain. New proprietors are liable to raise rents or want the apartments for other tenants who are personal friends. Renting agents at times have a bewildering number of applicants for one flat or set of apartments and prospective tenants are sometimes driven to unforeseen devices to secure any place in which to live. One of these cases is that of the minister of a church ill the suburbs of a large Eastern city, who, finding it impossible to secure apartments, has been compelled to live, with his family, in the committee rooms of the church in which he officiates, a cellar room in which there is a stove being the family kitchen. Another ease is that of a woman who wanted a permit to live in a tent on a vacant lot.