View report page

86
slum dwellers, enjoy living in slum surroundings and would inevitably reduce to a
similar condition any decent dwellings provided for them, since it has now been
proved that these re-housed families, except in a few instances, react favourably to
better surroundings. They improve in health, in their outlook, in their cleanliness,
and their children in intelligence. This old slander that persons removed from slum
surroundings would immediately reduce their municipal dwellings to slums has been
disproved although that will not prevent its being resurrected from time to time.
Perhaps one of the reasons for this improvement is that the management of
municipal properties does not rest with members of the Property Owners' Protection
Association and their agents. Persons living in houses in which the structure and the
fabric is allowed to go into ruin and in which the "suitable for members of the working
classes" mentality governs all that happens in connection with the dwellings, are
very disadvantageously placed as compared with the tenants of municipal housing
estates where each tenant is considered to have the full rights of a normal human
being.
Since shorthand notes of all the Inquiries are in my possession it would not be
difficult to give many instances of the type of evidence given on behalf of the Property
Owners' Protection Association, but a few will be sufficient to indicate the strength
of my contention.
At the Dagmar Cottages Public Inquiry these old cottages, with part through
ventilation, were stated to be dry and to show no rising damp whatever, and in the
"usual" list of works put forward on behalf of the owners as being required to render
the premises habitable, no mention was made of any works to remedy rising damp.
The following questions to witness by Counsel and the replies also indicate this, viz.—
Question 1: "Nothing has been provided for, as far as I remember, for dealing
with rising damp?"
Reply: "No, nothing has been provided."
Question 2: ''That I understand is because in your opinion there is no rising
damp ?"
Reply: "Yes."
Between April, 1937, and January, 1938, the Senior Housing Inspector of the
Borough Council had measured the advance in the rising dampness which amounted
to one foot in that period. Very serious dampness was present in the walls of two
cottages and as the Senior Housing Inspector stated in evidence, "The walls were
entirely saturated as the Inspector will see." All the dampness the expert on behalf
of the owners could find, however, was a "very slight dampness in the wall of the
staircase" of one of the cottages, a matter so insignificant as being hardly worth
mentioning.
It is interesting to note that the baclc wall of one cottage had been lined, with metal
sheeting, which was papered over, to cover up dampness, and in fact these two-storey
cottages were so very damp that it did not require any expert knowledge either to
find it or to recognise that much of it was rising damp.
Again, at the Swiss Cottages Inquiry, the witness on behalf of the owners, a
surveyor "14 years' experience with management of 8,000 working class properties,"
stated in his evidence that the houses, as they stood, were quite fit and that there