The Chattanooga news. [volume] (Chattanooga, Tenn.) 1891-1939, 1920-09-08
PEOPLE CRY FOR
HOUSES in VAIN
Five Million Homes Needed.
No One in Government
Turns a Hand.
CAUSES OF BUILDING HALT

Washington.-(N. e. A.)-NobodS
In the United States government IL
turning a hand to solve the HOUSING
shortage. The government hasn't
made a move, even to encourage
building. During the war II com
PEELED home building to cease.
But in London
London has a program to spend
ssoo'ooo'OoO for dwellings and sell
them TO families on long time pay
ments. Thf/ is being done, first, be-
cause the people need homes, and
second, to bring contentment and stor
the growth Of bolshevism.
But in America, where 100000
more homes are needed, where people
are being gtuged by landlords and
thrown into the streets because they
haven't the money to pay high rents
not one thing has been done. At the
present time 22,500,000 people are
crowded into inadequate quarters. In
every 100 homes 121 familioE are liv-
ing.
Building Checks.
But aplenty of things are being
done to prevent building. Following
are some of them:
Concentration of lumber and mate
rial in a few hands, and heartless
profiteering by the producers of the
material.
Not only extraordinarily high prices
for material, but prices that make
home-buying absolutely prohibitive
for the average person. Lumber prices
are up from 800 to 400 per cent
Utter helplessness on the part of
the railroads in transporting the ma
terial, even II the peoples ability to
buy could cope with the profiteering
prices.
Refusal of retailers and jobbers to
lower prices. although at the source of
the supply of lumber there has been
a 20 per cent. reduction in price the
last two months.
Refusal OF mills and wholesalers to
Sell direct to consumers, because of an
understanding with the retail trade.
The consumers must either submit to
'exorbitant profits by mddlemen or do
without homes.
Total absence OF prosecutions against
, lumber profiteers and hoarders and
those curtailing the cut of timber, des-
pite the fact that every person who
has had to do with the source of the
lumber supply since the beginning or
the war is rolling in wealth.
Although the forests of the country
have been shamefully and criminally
depleted and wasted by the lumber
kings, there is no relation between the
scarcity Of lumber and the house
shortage.
Two Years Cut.
With $4,000 000,00 feet Of lumber.
and other materials necessary, enough
houses could be built in the United
States to give every family that is
crowded in with someone else a sepa-
rate home. There are still in the for
ests 2,214, 900, 0000 900 board feet of lum-
Der
But the fact that It would take U.s.
900, 900. 900 feet to catch up with the
housing problem presents a serious
problem alone. the annual normal cut
Only one third the noraml cut is sup
posed to go into dwellings. Normally
II would take more than Ave years TO
build the houses that are needed now.
to say nothing about the Increased
needs that will accumulate during the
next half decade. If ban were put
on the use of lumber in every industry
and on exports. 1t would take two
years cut of lumber to supply the
houses needed.
But the lumber lords are not Hosing
n minutes sleep over this condition, for
tho larger the demand the higher the
price and they are getting rich several
hundred times faster now than they
were under normal conditions.
The increase of the demand over the
supply was brought about by the great
amount OF lumber used for war pur-
poses. the curtailment OF building dur
ing the war and the more than normal
establishment of new families.