Housing Problems (1935)

A great deal these days is written about the slums. This film is going to introduce you to some of the people really concerned. First, Councelor Lauder, chairman of the Stephanie Housing Committee, will tell you something of the problem of slum clearance. The problem of the slum faces us because in the early days rows upon rows of ugly, badly designed houses were hastily put up to provide accommodation for the everinccreasing army of workers which poured in from the country to the towns. Here are some pictures of typical slum architecture. This roof is sagging because the rafters have decayed. No amount of new tiles will put it right. When these houses were erected, anyone could build a factory right outside your front door. Many of the houses are so old that they had to be shored up to prevent them falling down altogether. Sometimes the mortar falls away from the brick and the walls bulge out. Here are examples of sheer neglect. These walls probably haven't been attended to since before the war, and the woodwork has gone unpainted for generations. Many houses have not got water laid on. People have to manage as well as they can with a tap in the yard and sometimes at the end of the street. Few houses have provision for the drying of washing, and the clean clothes had to be hung up in the narrowest of backyards. When it's wet, the clothes have to be dried in the passage. Here's a typical interior of a decayed house. And here the laugh and plaster have given away altogether. This lavatory and sink has a to-do for four families. And now for the people who have to live in the slums. Here is Mr. Norwood. These two rooms which I am in now, I have to pay attention as a wick boy. And I have a room to swing a cat around. I've also got five other neighbors alongside of me with the same predicament as I'm in myself. And I'm not only overrun with bugs, I've got mice and rats. With the washing, my M has to send out every little bit of washing there is. Uh every drop of water we have to go out in the yard for to fetch him. If we want to wash the baby, we have to use the dish and use it in the same room as where I am. And for cooking, well, we have to use the gas stove alongside the bed where we sleep. And we didn't drink in the other room where the children also lay. Coming into these rooms, I've had no luck since I've been in. First, I lost one youngster in one. And I lost another youngster and another one seven weeks after. This is what Mrs. Hill has to say. This house getting on my nerves. We're shored up in every room. It's a staircase that you can't walk up it unless you burnt your seasick. One leg you want longer than the other. And if the upstairs is coming downstairs where it's sinking. We went to see the new houses and they're lovely. For here, it gets on your nerves for everything's filthy, dirty, filthy wall. And the vermin in the walls is wicked. So, I'll tell you, we're fed up. If anybody comes to see you, they say they feel bious when they get down the stairs because it's all crooked. These are the stairs I told you about. You want one leg bigger than the other to come up. And when you scrub them, the water pulls down. the sides instead of coming on the floor on the stairs. What would be the old in the wall? I can't tell you how we have to manage there is that we just cleared up the daytime to keep the dirt out of our mouths and that's all. You got the stairs. You don't know whether you're coming down again or not. Same with the passage. That's all the same on the crook. In fact, everything in the out is on the crook. There's not a straight thing in it. What with the shore enough for the passage and the stairs and the cold cupboard? In fact, we've got no inconvenience whatsoever. You see, you'll let the children up the stairs in case they fall down and your front will go on the landing in case the landing comes down into the passage. So, I will tell you where we are fixed. And here is Mrs. Graves. Well, I have been here for 24 years, and this last woman, it has been a misery to me. My balls give way in the front room. I take my bed down and put in the back. I went to bed early. I had a baby very bad. In the morning, instead of getting up for the children to for school and being awake all night, I let the children lay as the baby went to sleep for the first time. So, a little black dog kept running about. So, I must have dazed off with the baby. Thinking it was a dog on me, I looked up. Instead of that, it was a big rat. I screamed and run out and left the baby. We've I have to put the dirt into our bath, fetch it fetch it through the kitchen window and out through the kitchen. We cannot get it out of the passage on account of the shorting nut. We have no cupboard for food, not even to put a bit of bread in. We leave anything on the table for nighttime. We have the rats. And here is Mr. Burner. I reckon the conditions of living in these little slums is a bit hard for my wife and besides myself and my children bringing them up in one room. [Music] Of course, a lot of people don't understand what it is living in one room. The cooking conditions is very hard, especially on the wife. She has to do her cooking. It's all done on a gas ring of means of frying this and frying that. If you ever comes to a baked dinner, it's in the oven and then light a fire outside. It's too warm in the room. Of course, we can only buy enough food for the one day as there's no conditions or anywhere to keep the food overnight as you wouldn't do the food any good to keep it as all the breath of the five in the one room to turn it bad. The washing conditions we have a little bit that is in the backyard. They're not too great, but we get over that. Of course, uh I don't suppose people realize what it really is to be tied up in the one room and cannot get anything any better. We are only hoping that the council will liven their ideas up and get their minds made up to get the flats ready so that every workingass man will have hygienic flat to live in where the cooking conditions is better, the living accommodation is better, sleeping accommodation is better and what's more we have a bath. The more enlightened public authorities have been applying themselves to the task of slum clearance with energy. Public authorities have now the power to pull down slums and put up in their place new and fine houses. But the everpresent problem which slows down the most energetic authority is where to put people while their hobvels are being pulled down and new houses built for them. A great deal of thought from architects, engineers, and other experts has gone into the design of buildings for rehousing. Here is a model of a block of flats prepared by the British Steelwork Association and based on recommendations by the Council for the Research on Housing Construction. The building has a steel frame which takes the whole weight. The walls do not have to support the weight of the building or the roof. They are made of light standard units which are fitted into position after the framework has been put up. All the parts of the building are standard. They can be brought complete from the factory and put into position at once. Here's another steel frame building designed for the quarry hill estate at leads. The walls, floors, and staircase treads are made of pre-cast concrete slabs reinforced by steel. The walls and floors are made with an airspace to keep out noise. Each flat has a backto-back range for coal or coke, a gas griller, and a gas plug by every fireplace. This model won first prize in a competition organized by the cement industry. In this kind of construction, wooden molds are put up and concrete poured in. The concrete is reinforced by light steel rods or mats. The walls carry the whole load and there is no other framework. In this particular example, walls and floors are cast in one piece. Here is another reinforced concrete building now going up at Kensel Green. The two blocks have been arranged to run roughly north and south so that the rooms get as much morning and evening sun as possible. Gas is used for cooking, heating, and lighting. The inside of a building is as important as the outside. The rooms must get as much sun as possible. The walls must keep out the sound of the people next door. The kitchen is very important. It must be easily kept clean. And the appliances must be cheap to run. The gas industry has designed suitable appliances for cheap cooking and for room and water heating, especially to meet the needs of slum clearance schemes. The general layout of a site is extremely important. Here's a model of the whole Quarry Hill estate at Leeds. It's a good example of blocks of flats laid out with large open spaces, a welfare center, a shopping center, and all kinds of amenities. Where there is enough room and where the price of land is not too high, it's possible to build cottage estates and give each house its own garden. When a public authority embarks on slum clearance work, it must take people just as they are. It is however our experience that if you provide people from the slums with decent homes, they quickly respond to the improved conditions and keep their homes clean and tidy. In Stephanie, we are finding that the amount of interest which the people are taking in their new flats is advancing day by day. And now let's have a word with Mrs. Readington. Well, I'm very pleased to know that I used that I've got a nice little flat market in Ringhouse now from market buildings where there was seven of us in two rooms. I could do all my home cooking in the room that we we slept and and lived. All of us, seven of us. Now I've got a nice little place of my own. Three bedrooms, a lovely salary, a living room, and a bathroom. The bathroom, the best of all, what we wanted away from market borders. I could not do no washing there. I had to send it all out. I couldn't open the windows let any air in. Well, I can open all the windows now and let all the nice fresh air in the morning of the children as my children's ever so much healthier and better. And now, Mrs. Atride. Well, I like the place very much. I've got two nice rooms, scaly and bathroom, a nice cupboard and a wardrobe and a nice cooker and a a portable copper. All the same, Mrs. Atride will never forget the rats in the house she had before. One night I was at bed and I said, "Mike," I said, "Old gentleman's up here again." I said, "They said, oh, nonsense." He said, "You're crackers." So I said, "No, I ain't. I can hear him." I said, "Quick." I said, "He's on the bed." They said, "Right, I come up." So when he come up, he said, "So he is." And you see him on the bed sitting like that. See, looking at him, he throw the clothes over the top. Of course, he got away again. When he got away, he got on the floor and he got behind my bed like that nicely and he put his two feet round the bed like that. So, he's gone. He said, "I don't think so." I said, "He is." So, then he said, "No, he's under the bed." When he joged down like that to find him, course he jumped up. He joged him with a broom and he got away from there. He went over on the sideboard, jumped him again with the broom, broke the broom, and then he knocked him down on the ground. Of course, the screams and he was terrible. So he had a jump on him and then he picked him up which killed him. There's two caretakers of this estate. We have to sweep the stairs daily, see that all balconies are clean and sweep up the courtyard and pick up litter on lawn. This takes us in the course of the morning up to about midday. Then we break away from dinner. After dinner, we have to come back and pick up the remaining litter left on the courtyard by the children and then do all minor repairs such as unstopping of sinks, unstopping of baths and unstopping of levities. We carry on this work up to about 5:00 in the evening when we break away for our tea. After tea, one man comes back on duty. He has to parade the courtyard, keep all children in in order, and see that they don't get up to no mischief. He has to carry on up till 12:00 at night when it becomes his duty then to walk around at midnight to see that no music or any noise he's been making on the estate for the quietness of the tenants. Up to the present only the fringe of the problem of the slums has been touched. However, there is reason to hope that within the next 10 years considerable strides will be made towards removing the worst slum. There was half of this court sleeping outside two or three nights a week. Couldn't get no sleep. Five of us got to sleep in one room upstairs saturated with bugs. Also got girl away through the condition of the place with pneumonia and also had a boy on one. Hundreds of them every direction. And not small ones but large ones just like beetles. You couldn't discern whether they were beetles or what. But they were bugs. The rain paws in there settles in that bit of wood there. Then after it settles out, they don't come through at the time when the rain comes, but it comes down a couple of days after and it smells terrible pain a week or two. And what's worse is when they go to school next day, if there is any burning on them, there's no fault of a but still they don't always look at that, do they?