MORE HOUSES NEEDED.

Taranaki Daily News, 15 July 1920, Page 9

MORE HOUSES NEEDED.

GREAT BRITAIN'S PROBLEM. . j WORKMEN REFUSE TO BUILD SLUM HOUSES. One of the moat difficult problems awaiting solution in Great Britain is that of providing a sufficient number of houses for the needs of the community' In every suburb in every city of England and Scotland (writes the London Correspondent of Melbourne Age) people have been vainly searching for vacant houses. There have been instances in which people who have been turned out of their hoUsse have committed suicide because, after weeks of weary searching, they cojiild not find housing accommodation. And every village has its cottage problem. In many villages the rustic lovers are unable to marry because they cannot set up homes of their own. Normally, Great Britain requires 100,000 new houses yearly, but as no houses were built during the war, both building materials and labor being monopolised by the Government for war purposes, there is now a deficiency of 500,000 houses. Owing to 'the high cost of labor and materials there is no prospect of tlie deficiency being made up for many years. Private persons will not build houses because it costs three times as much to build a house now as it dul before the war- A fall of prices is inevitable within the nest few years, and then the value of houses erected during the present period of high prices will fall, and the owners will lose heavily. Before the war the wages of bricklayers, masons, carpenters, and plumbers, were 9d to jlOd per hour. To-day they are beigg paid Is lOd to, 2s an hour, an'l some of their trade unions have put forward a demand for 3s an hour.' Owing to the shortage of labor, some builders are enticing workmep away from their jobs by offering them a subsistence allowance of 17s fid to 25s a week in addition to the union rates of wages. Not only have all building materials and all the articles necessary for building a house been increased in price owing t.o the supply being below ordinary requirements, but most of the articles are controlled by trade combines. Among tin; articles and materials that are being maintained at inflated prices by the usual methods of trusts are bricks, tiles, slates,, cement, sand, earthenware pipes, lead pipes, doors, nails, screws, hinges, locks, lavatory basins, sanitary fittings, baths, stoves, ranges, gas and electric fittings, paint, varnish, glass, and wait paper. Tiles have increased from £1 18s 6d per 1000 to £6 2s 6d, and other manufactured articles, such as rain water piping, are ten times as high as they were before the war. SOLUTIONS OFFERED.

But the problem of providing house? for the public must be solved, and the Ministry of Health, which has replaced the Local Government Board as a Government Department, has brought forward several proposals before Parliament. One proposal, which has been sanctioned by Parliament, is to givl a bonus of £l5O for each house erected by ft private individual after the plans have been approved by the Ministry. Th<> bonus is not big enough to tempt the speculative builder, but a few hundred people, each of whom wants to build a house for his own occupation, are taking advantage of it. Another proposal is to compel the municipalities to build houses on an extensive scale. For the most part the municipalities are willing to do so, but they have not the money .to carry out extensive building operations. The Government is willing to assist them by sharing the burden of the inevitable loss on erecting houses, which owing to hjgtf costs of construction will not bring in enough rent to pay interest, but neither the Government nor the municipalities can provide the hundreds of millions of pounds required to build all the houses needed- The municipalities have been authorised by Parliament to issue housing bonds at 6 per cent interest. It was thought that wealthy patriots in eac'i municipality would invest heavily in these bonds, but so far they have not shown any disposition to do so.

In addition to the problem of raising the money needed, there is the problem of obtaining sufficient skilled labor. The ranks of the men engaged in the building trades were thinned during the war, and there were no apprentices enrolled. The union officials estimate the loss ot skilled men in the building trades at 250,000. There are only 60,000 skilled bricklayers available, compared with 100,000 before the war, when the demand for bricklayers was much less pronounced than it is to-day. The building trade unions refuse to allow the ranks of skilled operatives to be "diluted" with unskilled labor to make up the deficiency, though there are some hundreds of thousands of ex-service men who are unemployed. The unionists admit that their objection to "dilution" is based on the fear of future unemployment for themselves. They feel that if the building trades are diluted the building boom will not last long, and the problem of unemployment in the building trades will be intensified by the presence of thousands of "dilutees."

POLICY OF "HOUSES FIRST." Owing to the shortage of labor the Government has given the municipalities power to prevent the construction of luxury buildings within their boundaries, so that the available labor may be concentrated on the policy of "houses first." During the war building operations, on many large undertakings were stopped by the Government, and half-fihishel buildings begun before the outbreak of war are still to be seen along some of the main thoroughfares of London. Recently soma of the big drapery firms and departmental stores of the West End, which participated in the prosperity created by high prices, began buildtog operations to extend .their premises, but the London County Council has ordere.l these operations to cease because the construction of houses is of more importance. For the guidance of the municipalities, the Ministry of Health has divided luxury buildings into three classes- The least objectionable class are buildings that will result in increasing employment -and enhance local revenue; next come buildings of a speculative kind that may assist in the development of the locality, and most prominently under the ban come luxury buildings, such as cinemas, theatres, clubs, and dancing halls. Some of the municipalities have made a start with building schemes, the largest of which provides for the erection of several hundred houses within the municipal boundaries, but further trois>le is looming ahead. Naturally when costs «re high th« municipality hav» ap-

proved of housing plftns which aim at reducing costs. But the building trade unions object to some of the municipal, building schemes which have received the approval of the Ministry of Health. They declare that their members are not going to build slum houses for themselves and their fellow workmen to live in.