Practical housing

Contents

PAGC

Chapter I. A General Survey ----- i

„ II. Existing Evils and their Causes - - - 7

„ III. The Removal of Existing Evils. — Part I. of the

Housing of the Working Classes Act, 1890 14

„ IV. The Removal of Existing Evils. — Part II. of the Housing of the Working Classes Act, 1890 ------ 35

„ V. The Prevention of Future Evils. — Town

Planning ------ 46

„ VI. The Economies that could be effected hj Town Planning for Landowners, House Builders, Rentpayers, and Ratepayers - 65

„ VII. Powers Possessed in Other Countries - - 67

„ VIII. Tentative Suggestions for English Legislation 81

„ IX. English Examples of Town Planning - - 93

„ X. Objections to Town Planning, and the

„ XI. The Maintenance of Improvements effected. — The Relationship between Landlord and Tenant. — Miss Octavia Hill's System. — The Stuttgart System. — Co-partnership Tenants' Housing Council - - -115

„ XII. Miscellaneous. — Municipal House Building, Municipal Land Purchase, and Land Leasing to Societies of Public Utility or Individuals. — Individual Ownership. — Rural Housing - - - - - 139

PAGF

CONTENTS {Continued).

Appendix A. — Mr. Horsfall on Administration - - - 149 „ B. — Suggested Amendments to Part II. of the 1890

„ C. — (i) Private Town Planning Bill - - - 164 „ C. — (2) Extracts from Liverpool Town Planning

„ D. — Existing Powers of Local Authorities with

regard to Town Developments - - 186

„ E. — The Pioneer Co-partnership Village - - 192

„ F. — Model Leases - - - - - -I95

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

PLATES

AT PAGE

Diagram showing Distribution of Population in England and

Wales at present --_____i

Liverpool : Hornby Street Area. — A Typical Court - - 26

Liverpool : Hornby Street Area. — Labourers' Dwellings - 30

Liverpool : Hornby Street Area. — One of the New Blocks - 31

Row of Houses before Repair - - - - - -32

Row of Houses after Repair - - - - - -32

A Typical Birmingham Court, before enforcing Part IL of the

1890 Act -_-_____ 32 Ground Plan showing the Conversion of Three Courts into

Front Elevation, showing how light and air are let into Courts 32

One of the Terraces after thorough Repair - - - - 32

Map showing open Spaces, etc. - - - - - 44

Street in a London Suburb ______ ^^

Children's Playground in a Co-partnership Village - - 44

Dr. Ludwig Hercher's Ideal Town Plan - - - - 52

View of Earswick - - - - - - - ~52

View of Bournville - - - - - - -52

Plan made in Conformity with Birmingham Bye-laws - "54

German Ring Street System - - - - - - 65

Backs of Suburban Villas - - - - - -66

What might be provided on Town Planning lines - - 66

Proposed Village at Earswick (Plan A) - - - - 95

PLATES {Continued).

Falling! Park Garden Suburb (Plan B) - -

Fallings Park Garden Suburb (Plan C) - -

Hampstead Garden Suburb (Plan D) - Common Green ------

Pair of Cottages, Hampstead Tenants Limited Harborne Tenants Limited (Plan E) - Sir Christopher Wren's Town Plan for London Plan showing Section of Roads as Proposed Result of Inelastic Bye-laws - _ _ _

" Town Planning " Road _ _ _ _

Backs of Cottages, 1903 -

Back Yard in Merrow Street Tenements, May, 1906 Recreation Ground and Garden Houses, May, 1906 Interior of Cottage Kitchen, May, 1906

OTHER ILLUSTRATIONS

Hornby Street Area, 1902

Hornby Street Area, 1907

An outside Staircase

Sketch of a Living-room Fireplace

Plan A. — Before Redistribution

Plan B. — After Redistribution -

25 27 29

30 62 63

Preface

Since " A Housing Policy " was written, it has been my good fortune to discuss this question with leading public men and officials in various countries, and by correspondence to obtain information from many others. It is impossible to thank by name all who have helped in the production of this book. I have done my best to avoid taking credit to myself that is due to others.

Great pains have been taken to verify every fact and figure given. When these are used as the basis of an argument in favour of my own view, care has been taken to understate the case ; whereas, with regard to opinions contrary to my own, an exactly opposite method has been adopted. While holding my own views strongly, I have endeavoured to be absolutely fair to opponents.

Many who disagree with the policy of self-help will yet accept some of the proposals made, while strenuously disagreeing with others. I hope it is possible for us to differ without quarrelling. Our object is the same ; we are both striving for the social ideal. Our methods, not our motives, differ.

Differences of opinion amongst those genuinely desirous of reform are natural, and, indeed, essential, to a successful solution ; but quarrels amongst ourselves are merely waste of time.

On this, at any rate, we are agreed — that the present conditions are thoroughly bad. Not only are lives lost through insanitary housing conditions, but, worse still, a chronic condition of low vitality and ill-health is fostered in our towns.

This moves to compassion on the sentimental side, but it should also rouse to energy on the commercial side. That is the point of view I have endeavoured to put. I believe everything advocated here is commercially sound, and a sound economic basis is essential to reforms if they are to be permanently successful and generally acceptable to this hardheaded nation.

If business energy and business methods can be combined with a just compassion, then the Housing problem will be on the way to solution.

f

Acres

19,800,000.

7\ millions are housed

on this area.

D

12 millions are housed on this area.

Acres

17,000,000.

This area is deducted as

unsuitable for housing.

(Mountains, rivers, etc.)

D

13 millions are housed on this area.

Diagram showing Distribution of Population in England and Wales at prksent.

J. S. NETTLEFOLD

CHAPTER I.

A GENERAL SURVEY.

URING the last fifty years no less than twenty-eight Acts of Parliament have been passed dealing with the Housing Question, and for the last ten or twenty years a strenuous agitation in favour of Housing Reform has been steadily growing ; yet up to the present little real improvement has been made, and England is only just realising how badly her people are housed, and that the house itself is only the beginning of the Housing problem. Surroundings, means of transit, open spaces, and light and air have an equally important part to play.

We have to-day comparatively few good houses and a mass of slums — a few wide main arteries for through traffic, and a network of unordered streets — a few large parks, but no playgrounds for the children of the gutter. Worst of all, our towns are being extended on unhealthy, unlovely, and expensive lines.

There is still another important point to be remembered. The Housing Question must be dealt with on broad lines as a national question. The result of leaving it to individual municipalities without direction, has been that they have done a little building here and there without regarding the wider issues.

Considered as an experimental stage, this policy has certain advantages, but it would be fatal to prolong it.

Those engaged in solving the Rural and the Urban Housing problem must join hands. The two are closely dependent upon each other, and whereas the details of each must be left to specialists, the same general principles must be brought to bear on both, and the land of England must be dealt with as a whole, and not, as now, in piecemeal fashion. The best must be got out of it, with benefit to the community as well as to the owner. The light and air essential to human health must not, as at present, be denied to a large proportion of the population by overcrowding on the ground space. The rights of private property in land, as in other things, must be recognised, but there should be no monopoly in light and air.

A general survey of the whole country shows that only a very small proportion of the poorest classes are properly housed, and a great many of those who are a little better off are not provided for as healthily as they ought to be for the rent paid.

The total area of England and Wales is about 37,000,000 acres, and in 1901 the population was just over 32,500,000, which means that if the population were evenly distributed over the whole country, each man, woman, and child in England and Wales would have just over an acre of land to live upon. Any suggestion to disperse the population in this manner would quite rightly be considered insane. It is equally insane to go to the other extreme, as we do at present. The diagrams at the beginning of this chapter illustrate the case. These diagrams have been arrived at in the following manner : When considering the question of housing the people of England on the land of England, we must not forget that a large quantity of this land is unsuitable for building. In order to be well on the safe side, let us deduct 17,000,000 acres ; there remains 20,000,000 acres, on which 32,500,000 people live and have to earn their bread, that is, just under three-quarters of an acre per person, or about three acres per house.

These figures show that even in England, which is the second most thickly populated country in the world, there is plenty of room and space to live upon, if organisation and business principles were applied to the Housing problem.

It is useless to attempt to overcome the forces that result in forming large centres of population on comparatively small areas of land; that is, we cannot abolish towns, but we might, by the exercise of foresight and co-operation largely control their development and direct their growth on sensible lines.

A General Survey. 3

Out of our total population of thirty-two and a half millions twenty-five millions live in County Boroughs, Boroughs, and Urban Districts, whose area is rather less than 4,000,000 acres. The remaining 16,000,000 acres of rural building land provide housing accommodation for only 7,500,000 people.

The 4,000,000 acres which comprise our County Boroughs, Boroughs, and Urban Districts are divided into County Boroughs and Boroughs on 500,000 acres, and Urban Districts on 3,500,000 acres. We must deduct three-fourths from the 500,000 acres in County Boroughs as areas occupied by warehouses, manufactories, business premises, railways, etc., and also of undeveloped land, and then we find that not more than one-fourth — that is, only 125,000 acres — are used for housing purposes. By the same method it has been ascertained from carefully prepared statistics that of the 3,500,000 acres comprising Urban Districts, not more than one-fiftieth is used for housing the people. One-fourth of 500,000 is 125,000 acres, and one-fiftieth of 3,500,000 is 70,000. Add these two results together and we get 195,000, say 200,000 acres, as the total amount of land on which 25,000,000, out of our total population of 32,500,000, are housed.

Thirteen millions of these 25,000,000 are living in 2,600,000 tenements of four rooms or less. Each of these tenements, including the air space round it, certainly does not, on the most liberal calculation, occupy more than 1,000 square feet. 2,600,000 tenements, at 1,000 square feet each, will together occupy about 60,000 acres, leaving 140,000 acres for the other 12,000,000 who live in County Boroughs and Urban Districts.

That is to say, two-fifths of the population of England and Wales are crowded together on just over one eighthundredth part of the total land of the country, another two-fifths occupy a little more than one two-hundred-andfiftieth part, and the remaining fifth is scattered over the rest of the land. The first plate shows the proportions in diagrammatic form.

It is not suggested that diagrams of this sort can possibly be mathematically exact, but I am convinced after careful reckoning and checking that the diagrams give a correct impression of the way in which we " practical " Englishmen overcrowd dear land and leave cheap land vacant, regardless of the fact that it is much healthier and pleasanter to use cheap land, for the simple reason that for any given expenditure in rent much more of it can be obtained.

That is not all ; those who have observed the existing Housing conditions in this country are aware that in the vast majority of cases poor people live on dear land and rich people live on cheap land, " which is absurd."

The consideration of the question how to house properly the people of England on the land of England, reminds us that in theory the land of England all belongs to the Crown, and through the Crown to the people. In practice it belongs to a large number of individuals, whose object is (and under present circumstances, no fair-minded man can blame them) to get as much as possible out of their land. This is just what the business man does with his brains and the working man does with his labour; but all sorts of laws, from the Factory Acts onwards, have been enacted to prevent capitalists, brain-workers, and hand-workers from making money by sweating their fellow-citizens, whereas no law has yet been enacted in this country to prevent land-sweating — that is, the reckless overcrowding of human beings on the land in badly-planned towns. This omission has not only seriously injured the vitality, and therefore also the wealthproducing power of large numbers of English men and women, it has also resulted in the wasteful neglect of the food-pioducing possibilities of more than half the land in this country.

Town and country have been separated from each other, instead of being intermingled as they should be. Bring the producer and consumer of food nearer together by careful planning and organisation, and both would benefit. The producer would get more for his labour and the consumer pay less for his food, because the cost of transfer would be reduced. In addition to this, large tracts of land, now worth very little, would command a higher price.

Every patriot deplores the deterioration in the physique of our town dwellers, and every economist recognises that it will have to be stopped if England is to maintain her present high position among the commercial nations of the world.

By skilful organisation a man may get the most possible out of workshops and machinery without sweating- his employees, and he thereby benefits the nation as well as himself; the man who gets the most possible out of land by putting fifty or sixty houses on the acre, does incalculable mischief to his fellow-citizens, and in the long run those who buy such houses find that it is very bad business. Sooner or later the vSanitary Authority is bound to come down upon them, and insist upon the heavy expenditure necessary to make the houses fit for human habitation.

The great energy already applied to the solution of the Housing problem by countless disinterested men and women

A General Survey. 5

has not, as yet, produced much tangible result, compared with what requires to be done ; but it has made it possible now to take a great step forward on more comprehensive lines, and Mr. Horsfall, of Manchester, has given to England at the psychological moment the inspiration required by his exposition of Town Planning.

We have been entangling ourselves with regulations as to the thickness of walls, the cubic contents of rooms, and the minimum width of roadways, without securing quality in the building material, and consequently sound houses. We also continue to allow disastrously excessive numbers of houses per acre, and we provide no playgrounds for the children or resting-places for the older people, except by private charity.

Mr. Horsfall has suggested how we can make our towns healthy, cheerful, and convenient, and careful consideration has shown that this suggestion can be carried out with material as well as moral benefit to all concerned.

Public opinion is more than ready for Housing Reform, and Town Planning will be found upon examination to be a sound business proposition for dealing with the difficulties in a comprehensive manner, instead of in our present piecemeal fashion.

For the last century England has been developing her industrial possibilities with a rapidity unequalled in the history of the world, and at the same time has almost entirely neglected her agricultural opportunities.

The people of England have crowded together in the confined Urban Districts on narrow blocks of land, where it is impossible for the greater part of them to obtain the unobstructed light and pure air essential to human health, and an overwhelming proportion of the land available for them to live upon is left practically unused.

Town Planning, together with cheap and rapid means of transit, now make it possible to combine the means of livelihood in our towns with the health-giving opportunities of the country.

It is not only ridiculous, but obviously unfair, that land in our country districts should only be worth tens of pounds per acre when land in our towns, which in itself is worth no more if as much, should fetch as many thousands. Under capable administration this state of affairs could certainly be improved upon.

It is not suggested that the introduction of Town Planning would immediately, or, indeed, ever entirely adjust this irrational discrepancy, but it will be obvious to the most casual observer that, by restricting the number of houses to be built per acre, a much larger amount of land will be brought into use than is the case under present conditions.

It will be my endeavour in the following pages to convince my readers that Town Planning and the other remedies advocated will, if applied with patience and justice, achieve the end in view with the least possible present hardship, and the greatest possible ultimate benefit, to all concerned.

Chapter II. Existing Evils And Their Causes

N the preceding chapter it has been shown by a general survey of the country as a whole how extravagant and thoughtless we English are in the matter of Housing. We overcrowd dear land and leave cheap land vacant, despite the fact that it is better to live upon cheap land, because you can get more of it, and therefore more space, light, and air.

This statement is just as true of our towns taken individually as it is of the country taken as a whole. There are very few, if any, towns of any size in England where there is not enough land for the people to live upon in health and comfort, if only they were evenly distributed over the area available for the purpose.

On the one hand, there is in every town, especially near the boundary, a considerable acreage free from buildings, and there is also a considerable acreage grossly overcrowded. If this population now overcrowded in the slums were evenly distributed over the whole area, there would be plenty of room for everyone. Such distribution would also benefit the landowners, who would be better off than at present, because there would be so much more land bringing in a reasonable income, instead of a small proportion earning high ground rents, and a large proportion earning practically nothing at all.

It is the fashion nowadays with a certain class of social reformers to ascribe the present unsatisfactory state of affairs to the selfishness of landowners and property owners. I venture to suggest that the real cause lies much deeper. Our unhealthy, unlovely, cheerless, and expensive towns are, in my opinion, due more to the faults of our system than to the shortcomings of any class or of individuals. I do not suggest that the individuals concerned are faultless : they are human like the rest of us, and naturally look to the main chance ; but those engaged in town development and house building are no worse than the rest of us.

Our present inelastic bye-law system harasses them unceasingly on all sorts of details without preventing land speculation and jerry building, and it does not attempt the one thing which might be useful — a comprehensive control of town development.

Far from assisting, it actually discourages co-operation between those engaged in the work of developing our towns and those responsible for supervising the work ; that is to say, it gives no power to Local Authorities to differentiate between a public-spirited landowner and the most unscrupulous land speculator and jerry builder.

Our present system often prevents the respectable landowner and housebuilder from laying out his land in the best way, but the land speculator and jerry builder manage to evade hampering restrictions. There is no power whatever given to Local Authorities to discriminate between the honest builder and the jerry builder.

The holding up of land near large towns is one of the causes of overcrowded suburbs. This is not always due to greed of gain : landowners sometimes withhold their land because under present conditions this is the only means of protection against the jerry builder.

Town extension is a most difficult and complicated problem, and without complete co-operation between those engaged in the provision and supervision of proper Housing accommodation for the people, we are doomed to utter failure. This has been too often the case in the growth of English towns.

Accurate foresight is a gift possessed by no human being, but many have foresight in a greater or lesser degree. In the matter of town extension, there is no faculty more desirable or more economical to the pockets of the ratepayers than foresight, and yet, in this " practical " country of ours. Local Authorities and others responsible for the important business under consideration have no powers or encouragement whatever to exercise it.

As an example. Local Authorities have no power whatever, unless they buy land at a prohibitive price, to insist upon an adequate width for roads that are already or will evidently soon become main arteries of busy traffic. This has cost the ratepayers of England a very large sum of money.

Statistics collected from the County Boroughs and Boroughs of the Kingdom show that at least thirty millions of money have been expended during the last quarter of a

Existing Evils and their Causes. 9

century on street widenings and other absolutely necessary improvements of that nature. A very large proportion of this expenditure — it is impossible to say exactly how much, but between twenty and twenty-five millions — has been spent on compensation for the demolition of buildings which never ought to have been put up, and never would have been put up on such sites if Local Authorities had possessed the Town Planning powers now generally advocated by everyone who has given the slightest attention to the subject.

Modern means of communication have made more land available for Housing purposes than was the case when people were obliged by the exigencies of their occupations and the absence of cheap, quick means of transit to congregate in very restricted areas. This means that it should now be possible, with good management, to get land for purely Housing purposes much cheaper than formerly, because there is an infinitely larger supply at our command. But in order to avail themselves to the utmost of the possibilities of modern means of cheap, rapid transit, it is essential to have much wider main thoroughfares than are at present to be found, except in a very few of our English towns. Under the present system, this essential to healthy Housing at reasonable rents is never thought of until the cost of street widening is almost prohibitive.

Passing from the exercise of foresight and returning to the practice of co-operation, we find that, owing to the absence of co-operation, not only between Local Authorities and landowners, but also between neighbouring landowners, the town dweller (who eventually has to suffer for all the mistakes that are made) is called upon to find much more in rent and rates than would be necessary under proper organisation, and has to put up with all sorts of inconveniences and annoyances that might quite easily have been avoided.

Let us examine what now takes place when a landowner decides to develop his land for building. Our present regulations stipulate that every new street must be of a certain minimum width largely regardless of what traflric is likely to go along it. The sides of the streets must be curbed and channelled and the footpaths paved with flagstones in a most expensive manner. This entails a very heavy expenditure in estate development, which, on the average, is about equal to the value of the land that is going to be developed. The result of this heavy expenditure is that the landowner, in order to get a return on the capital invested, crowds just as many houses per acre on to his land as the bye-laws will allow. That is, the model bye-laws allow fifty-six houses to the acre, whereas, from the hygienic point of view, there should not be more than twelve, and, from the economic point of view, this would be feasible on Town Planning lines.

At present, if a progressive landowner expresses his willingness to restrict the number of houses per acre to twelve, instead of fifty-six as allowed by the bye-laws — provided the Local Authority will meet him in the cost of estate development by allowing him to make the roadways as wide as, and no wider than is required for the traffic that will pass over them, although maintaining the present distances between the houses — he is told at once that the bye-laws are prohibitive. The Local Authorities are not to blame for this, but only our short-sighted, narrow-minded bye-law system. If Local Authorities had more latitude allowed to them in the administration of their bye-laws, they could materially reduce the cost of estate-development, and thereby obtain a reduction in the number of houses built per acre, and ensure the provision of open spaces.

It is fortunately becoming more and more recognised every day that open spaces are as necessary to the health of a town, as streets are to its traffic. The provision of allotments, as a counter-attraction to the public-house, could also be arranged for, if only these things were thought of beforehand. Under our present system, these boons to the self-respecting working-man and his wife and children are never thought of until it is too late to provide them at a price within the means of the ratepayers or the rent-payers of our large towns.

I hope I have said enough to show the necessity for co-operation between Local Authorities and land-owners. There is also urgent necessity for more co-operation between adjoining landowners. It is obvious on the face of it, that the community would be greatly benefited if the land in any neighbourhood were developed as a whole, and not piecemeal ; but this aspect of the question, as A'ell as every other aspect, must be considered from the point of view of those who own the land, as well as from the point of view of those who use it.

More than one practical land agent of good standing has informed me that there is no greater loss to landowners under our present incoherent system, than the power of one landowner to seriously depreciate his neighbour's property. Each landowner develops his own little bit in his own little way, and very often purposely plans his roads, and makes his other arrangements so as to inconvenience and injure his neighbour.

Existing Evils and their Causes. 1 1

This is no doubt partly due to our national love of independence, which in its proper place is a most useful trait, and is largely responsible for England's present position among the nations of the world, but which, in this matter of housing, has resulted in great inconvenience and expense to those who use and live upon the land, as well as in serious loss to the owners of land. The time has come to substitute large-minded co-operation for small-minded independence. A sound Town Planning Act, administered with vigour and discretion, would put an end to the silly bickerings that have done so much harm in the past.

It should be possible to approximate the poor man's housing conditions more nearly to the present circumstances of the rich man, and to relieve the rich classes of the constant dread that their houses may be spoilt and the value of their property diminished by the erection near them of a jerrybuilt suburb. It should also be possible to save money for landowners, house-builders, rent-payers, and rate-payers. Town-planning is urgently required quite as much in the interest of public and private economy, as in the Interest of public health and well-being.

The present unnecessary waste of public and private money is almost, if not quite as bad as the thoughtless destruction of human life and human health in our large towns.

There is still another aspect that claims our thought and care, and that is the influence of beautiful surroundings on the enjoyment of life. How can we expect people to be happy and contented unless we provide them with some means of rational enjoyment? The rich can provide their own, but the poor have little or no means at their disposal in our modern English towns.

I have already dealt with open spaces, playgrounds and allotments. There are many other important details that might be mentioned. I will only deal with one. Under present conditions, when a new estate is developed for building, the first thing done is to cut down trees that have taken fifty or one hundred years to grow, and which, if left standing, would be of great value to the health of the district, as well as greatly adding to the cheerfulness of the neighbourhood. This is done because no street must be of less than a certain minimum width, and because as already explained, the largest possible number of houses must be crowded on to the land in order to repay the cost of street development.