HOMELESS AMERICANS,

Taranaki Daily News, 19 March 1921, Page 11

HOMELESS AMERICANS,

ACUTE HOUSING PROBLEM The fact that the United States emerged richer from the war than she was when she started has not prevented her from suffering from an acute housing problem. New York, with a population of over 6,000,000, is estimated to lack quarters for something like 500,000. The plight of the miserable homeseeker in the great flat districts, whose gaunt streets gridiron ' the upper part of New York, has been accentuated by threats of strikes by the drivers of moving vans, by plumbers, painters, and others. His regrets for the good old days of a few years ago, when there were 50,000 too many flats in the town, and a month’s free occupation was the rule, are the stock-in-trade of the comic papers. There are, roughly speaking, two types of houses in different cities. New York goes in for flats, and flats means a great deal of steel construction. Smaller cities go in for rows of wooden houses; in fact a vast majority [of Americans must live in wooden houses. Larger cities sometimes rely partly on flats and partly on houses. Washington is an example of that, and Chicago another. Baltimore most nearly approaches the British system of rows of small houses, and very picturesque they are, with their neat brick faces and their white-swashed steps or “stoops” where, on hot evenings, families sit and fan themselves. Philadelphia, as befits its position, is a cross between New York and BaHimore. As one goes west the wooden house grows commoner. The price and scarcity of wood and. steel have thus been a major factor in the problem. . Labor troubles , come next, and then, perhaps, the restriction dit in the interests of deflation. Whether the Federal Government will take up the matter remains to be seen. If they do. it is pretty certain that they will go first for schemes of concrete and steel construction and then for y r jck. It is not that there is any prejudice against the wooden house. Wood has been successfully tried in the United States through the centuries. One finds in the pretty elm-shaded streets of any New England city dwellings of wood that have been steadily used for 100 or even 200 years, and are as good as new. But there is anxiety about the future timber supply, and the concrete house is rapidly becoming a not uncommon form of private venture.