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The suggested programme for the first year following the end
of hostilities was the provision of houses for 200 families: at the
time when this programme was put forward, the enormous expenditure
of time and labour on the repair of houses damaged by flying
bombs" could not be foreseen; still, by the later months of 1946,
270 new homes will, we hope, be erected.
The large number of small houses completely destroyed by the
flying bombs has changed the situation. Another thing of outstanding
importance is the large number of new families, young people
who married during the war, many of whom now have children.
At present many of these young families are living in the homes of
their parents, and as demobilisation proceeds they are being joined
by their husbands with great and increasing inconvenience and distress
to old and young; in a number of cases there is actually
statutory overcrowding.
The re-housing problem is still a large one: it can be nothing
but a temporary expedient to accommodate "bombed out "
families in requisitioned houses: sooner or later they will have to
be accommodated in houses of their own.
A house is more than a shelter from the elements : it is, or
should be, a home. Minds, no less than bodies, need rest. Real
rest and relaxation cannot be obtained without adequate living
space: and by living space we surely must mean more than minimum
standards of floor space and cubic capacity. It would appear that
if these are sufficient to prevent actual physical ill-health we are
asked to agree that they constitute a home. In no other way is it
possible to explain a legal standard of over-crowding which decrees
that every room in a house—except the bathroom, water-closet
and scullery—are to be used as sleeping rooms. The family is often,
and rightly, regarded as the unit in our social life ; but a family
is made up of individuals, and some degree of privacy for individuals
is essential for a healthy family life.
If space for living is inadequate, family life is distorted;
children are apt to be a nuisance: trivial annoyances, which under
such conditions are of almost daily occurrence, achieve exaggerated
importance ; harmony is disturbed and things fester in the mind.
One does not have to be a doctor for very long to know that body,
mind and spirit are indeed inseparable and interdependent, and
that unrest or disease in any one re-acts harmfully on the whole.
However difficult and trying the circumstances may be, most
people can preserve their balance and their mental health if they
can have any real hope that they will get adequate homes in the
not too distant future, but that is a hope which is denied to the
large majority of those who are at present in need of homes. It
is a hope which I, for one, do not dare to encourage, since the present
Housing programme in Beckenham cannot possibly provide for
more than a fraction of those in need.
I must refer again to what I said in the introduction to my
Annual Report for the year 1944: that there are many small houses
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