Evening star., 1934-09-30
Low-Cost Housing Abroad.

NlAPAAdsAo AiOW SCAiA6 PidNCA AL
this country on provision of low-cost
housing makes doubly interesting two
current discussions of low-cost housing
projects abroad. One is provided in
the recently published report Of the
Brookings Institution on the Housing
Program of the City of Vienna" and
the other is contained in an article by
Herbert N Casson, editor of the Eff
cheney Magazine of London, in the
October Nations Business. A descrip-
ton of the Brookings Institutions re-
port on the Vienna experiment will
be found elsewhere in the columns of
today's Star.
The housing program in Vienna,
brought about in the beginning by the
existence of an extreme emergency
resulting from the war and other
causes, was carried through by the
Social Democratic party and was, of
course. representative Of a political
philosophy that is still regarded as
relatively extreme 1t was successful
in the provision of low-cost housing,
the extremely low rentals being due
to the fact that capital investment
from current tax revenues was not ex-
pected to yield any financial returns
and was written off the books as soon
as it was made. After construction
| the only cost was maintenance, and
the rentals were correspondingly low.
But, notwithstanding the success"
of the program in the actual provision
| of houses, the authors of the Brookings
report, Charles o. Hardy and Robert
R Kuczynski, are not convinced that
housing-like the provision of schools,
streets and parks-"is service which
ought ideally to be rendered by the
city without direct cost to the occu-
pant They also find lack of evidence
to support the idea that if shelter is
to be paid for by the occupants, "it
can be built and operated as public
utility more economically than by
private enterprise" The authors also
point out that part of the acute situ-
alton which made the Vienna housing
venture necessary in the beginning re-
suited mot from free enterprise, but
from public interference with the play
of free enterprise" Free enterprise in
building in Vienna has been practically
killed by the socialistic housing pro-
gram, and before it was dead it was
hog tied by excessive taxation and
regulation.
In his article on Great Britain S great
housing program, under which houses
are being built by non-governmental
agencies at the rate Of thousand a
day and which has brought to Britain
the greatest building boom in history
Mr. Casson has nothing but condemna
ton for the governments own housing
scheme, which, he contends, was an
almost total failure. The author, de-
scribing the government activity after
the war to realize Mr.. Lloyd Georges
slogan Of Homes for Heroes" says
that what the governments own
housing program did was:
Completely to demoralize the whole
building trade. The more it tried to
keep prices down, the more they rose
In 1920 there was a condition of
paralysis. The building people were
tied hand and foot by red tape In
that year not thousand houses were
| built in the whole of Great Britain.
Four-ffths of the houses now con-
structed are built by private enter
prise, without any assistance from the
government or from ANY town or city
council" Attractive $4,000 dwellings
are sold for S375 down and ST week,
the building societies" buying the
homes from speculative builders and
financing the purchase by the owning
occupant, such activity yielding re-
turns to private investors of four to
| five per cent.