The housing question

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Monograph

Identifikator:: 1023104237

URN:: urn:nbn:de:zbw-retromon-61777

Document type:: Monograph

Title:: The housing question

Place of publication:: London

Publisher:: George Allen & Unwin Ltd.

Year of publication:: 1922

Scope:: 1 Online-Ressource (125 Seiten)

Collection:: Economics Books

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FIRST EXCUSE That the Working-Classes do not need the Houses The following passage occurred in the speech of the present Minister of Health on the 21st July, 1921, in the House of Commons, when the Government’s policy to stop further housing was under debate :— “ So far as I can ascertain—and nothing is more difficult to ascertain —what the housing shortage is depends upon the tem perament of the people who are making out the needs. There was really no scientific basis for it. The best figure I have been able to obtain of the shortage of working-class houses since 1914 puts it at about 300,000. You have to take from that something like nearly 50,000 built during the war, and that makes these 500,000 houses of the Right Hon. Gentleman opposite [Mr. Asquith] come down to about 250,000. If you take from that 210,000 houses, which are going to be built, we see where we are. The hiatus in all quarters and from all causes is not as great as the Right Hon. Gentleman estimated.” This remarkable statement contained a prodigious deception. Assuming Sir Alfred Mond’s figure of a shortage of 300,000 houses in 1914 to be right, he took no account of the fact that the wastage of houses in Britain is about 90,000 a year, so that by the date he was speaking the 300,000 had become some 930,000, or, deducting 50,000 built in war-time, 880,000. This is not far off the figure of 911,000, which was the sum of 17 B

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