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88
PROPERTY OWNERS' PROTECTION ASSOCIATION, LTD.
1st January, 1929.
SLUMS AND OVERCROWDING CANNOT BE ABOLISHED WITHOUT
JUST, URGENT, AND NECESSARY ALTERATIONS IN THE LAW.
Reverend Sir,
With respect to the. Pastoral letter on Housing issued by The Lord Bishop
of London, accompanied by a Memorandum, my Council would ask you to study
the real state of the case most carefully, before dealing with this topic from
the Pulpit.
This Association has upwards of 5,000 members who are all owners of house
property, and we are most anxious to remove the evils of which His Lordship
complains, and which we admit are deplorable.
Two great obstacles exist to any adequate reform:—
(a) So long as the Rent Restrictions Acts remain in force, owners are
powerless to deal with dirty tenants and overcrowded houses, as the Courts
refuse to make orders for ejectment, in spite of the prevalence of such
conditions.
(b) The second obstacle is the notoriously iniquitous and unjust
confiscation of property by clearance schemes under Section 46 of the Housing
Act, 1925, whereby less than the actual site value of the land is paid for the
property taken, and nothing at all for the houses (although they may be
sound and in good repair), merely because they happen to be in an alleged
unhealthy area.
This has brought many innocent persons to ruin, notwithstanding the fact
that they have done everything possible by an owner to maintain proper sanitary
conditions in the houses belonging to them.
You will be interested to know that His Lordship has approved of my Council
meeting the Housing Committee of the Diocesan Conference and it is hoped
that this will be arranged very shortly, at any rate before Sunday, 13th January.
The Association wishes to make it quite clear that we do not in any way
defend the existence of houses which are unfit for human habitation in consequence
of structural defects or irreparable dilapidation, neither do we suggest that
compensation should be paid for any such buildings.
I shall be very glad to give you any further information you may wish to
have, either personally at this office or by letter before you prepare your Sermon.
I am, Reverend Sir,
Yours very truly,
Secretary.
In my Annual Report to the Council for the year 1928, I printed a report which
I had submitted to the Public Health Committee on the subject of "Botching,"
that is, inefficient repairing and ineffectual compliance with sanitary notices, and
as an example and to illustrate difficulties experienced by the Public Health Department,
I quoted correspondence with the Secretary of the Property Owners' Protection
Association, and a Surveyor from the Association, and the tenant of a dwelling who
complained by letter on a number of occasions to the Public Health Department,
with good reason, of a leaky roof. The tenant, not a "dirty tenant," and not living