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42
room). The breadwinners in such insanitary and dilapidated property
are not as a rule skilled workmen, and most of them, even when the
greatest care and economy are exercised, make little more than a
bare living wage. To close the houses of such people because they
are insanitary, and to offer them other houses at a much-increased
rental, and often far removed from the scene of their daily work, is
not seriously to attack the difficulty of improving the conditions of life
of these people. To build houses that could not possibly be let under
6s. 6d. a week (as is generally the case), is doing nothing for a class
of people who were formerly paying but 2s. 6d. The provision of the
former class of houses may well be left to private enterprise. They
will soon be tenanted by those who are in receipt of fairly good wages,
and who are really not the class of people for whom it is so necessary
to find improved accommodation. The whole question is, of course,
beset with great and serious difficulty, and the present state of our
legislation does little to assist in its solution. The problem which
has to be solved in the near future by local authorities is how to
provide healthy houses for poor people of a class that the speculative
builder does not provide for.
It is very generally conceded that those in humble circumstances
cannot afford to pay more for rent than one-sixth of the income
earned. The class which stands most in need of municipal help in the
direction of housing is the class which does not earn more than from
20s. to 25s. a week on an everage, and these want accommodation at
not more than 3s. 6d. to 4s. 6d. a week. Once the supply is equal to
the demand, rent would resume a more rational ratio to the workman's
wage, instead of the fourth or even third which it often represents at
present. If they are going to meet this most real want, local
authorities must not dream of an "annual profit," but will have in
many cases to subsidise such provision to some small extent out of
the rates. The much desired extension of the period of repayment
of loans for land purchase to a hundred years would do much to
reduce the financial difficulties attending the great problem of the
housing of the working classes.