has worked in the office of the Commissioner of Social Security in the United States, then came to the L.S.E. to research into housing policy in Britain and is now in charge of Long Range Research in the U.S. Social Security Administration. This background uniquely prepares him for the task he has set himself in this book*: exploring the problems of and the remedies to slum housing in the United States and Britain.
REVIEW
It is probable that the section on Britain will be of more interest to the general reader. Predictably, Mr. Schorr amuses himself with the famous 1955 figure of 850,000 unfit houses. What constitutes unfit? The Liverpool local authority estimated 43 per cent. of their houses unfit while Stretford found only 0.5 per cent. in this condition. Mr. Schorr points out that of the houses regarded as ‘fit’ over a quarter did not contain a wash basin. He calculates that by the most ludicrously conservative reckoning 250,000 houses a year are required for replacement needs alone. In February, 1963, the Government suggested that over the next ten years London would require 150,000 houses for replacement. Schorr points out that this assumes an expected average life of a London dwelling to be 160 years! The building industry is savagely attacked : “building to low standards is effectively a book-keeping transaction to shift an expense from a local authority or development corporation to the budget of its tenant. That is, if a new house is built without heat in a bedroom or sufficient hot water or a finished floor, it is fully expected the tenant will provide it.” Schorr also takes a look at the new towns to see if they do effectively provide for the poorer sections of the community. The inescapable conclusion is that those who are in most need are not being served. In his conclusions, when British and American housing plans are compared, he writes: “The outstanding limitations in the British programme appears to be scant ambition. One limitation the two nations share—the notion that general advance in standards oi living will inevitably improve the lot of all. It is convenient to believe this, but it is a fable. In mest cases, people die poor because they were born poor. To alter this natural progression requires sustained iuiterest and educated attention.”