Though we are nearing the end of the first half of 1926, there is no relief in the real housing problem of Rushden and district.  In fact, according to the figures available, the position is getting worse, and existing houses are getting more crowded than ever.

  Mr. W. B. Madin, Surveyor to the Rushden Urban Council, is this week inviting building contractors to tender for the erection of 26 parlour-type houses and ten non-parlour type houses in Irchester-road, Rushden.  The regulations governing the contract will include the obligation on the part of the contractor to employ a proportion of apprentices.  The houses will be less in number than one for every ten applicants, and there would probably be 20 tenants willing to take each house if all who want houses in Rushden were not discouraged from applying.

  For those 36 houses there are over 300 on the waiting list, but there are many others who consider it hopeless to put their names on the list.  And, with progress at the present rate, they are right!  A prominent member of the Housing Committee told one of our reporters the other day that a man who had been in rooms two years, with a wife and child, would have to wait four years more to be able to rent a house in Rushden, and

Those Married This Year

would have to wait at least seven years.  A nice prospect for the many couples in the district who were married last Easter and this Whitsuntide and for those who will be married in August next!

  Higham Ferrers Town Council, it is said, will be letting twelve more new houses at their meeting early in July, but they will not nearly meet the demand.  The same tale is told at Irthlingborough, Irchester, Raunds, and other places.  The total of houses which it is hoped to build in all these places does not even keep pace with the weddings, let alone make up the deficiency which had existed for some years.  Look at this week’s issue of The Rushden Echo for weddings!

  The local authorities in this part of the country seem to content themselves with orthodox ideas regarding the type of houses to build, but other and more experienced bodies in many parts of the country, after investigation and experiment, are going in for schemes which will produce habitable dwellings rapidly and cheaply.  Birmingham has built thousands of houses with two self-contained flats in each, one flat having a garden and entrance at one side and the other a separate garden and entrance at the other side.  These flats, with living-room, bedroom, combined kitchen and bathroom, and all modern conveniences (some with electric light and others with gas), are let at from 6s. to 8s. a week, and are eminently suitable for young couples or for a young couple and one child.  With more than one child they would tend to become crowded.  The baths are sunk in the kitchen floor, and one may have the luxury, in the cold weather, of a bath in front of the fire.  A representative of The Rushden Echo who inspected these dwellings was impressed by the fact that they were a commendable attempt to give young people who are in their early years of married life a home of their own – that blessed earthly paradise for which they yearn above everything else.  Fifty of these in Rushden would make a difference in the comfort and mental outlook of 100 young couples in the town.  Only those who have experienced it know the misery and discomfort of occupying rooms in somebody else’s house, especially when the house is of the old-fashioned type so prevalent in this district – no passage through, and small kitchens in which two housewives find it very awkward to cook together.

  Not more than one or two people in rooms in the district have a separate kitchen, and even where they have they most likely lack that sense of freedom from irksome restraint, that healthy independence and satisfaction of mind which comes from the knowledge that one is living in one’s own little home, “be it ever so humble.”

  Every housing effort – all the brains and material at the disposal of the Council – ought to be directed to solving the problem of these young people.  Their present existence is anti-social.  If they are at all sensitive, and if they like a little privacy, and freedom – who dies not? – their outlook in life is blasted at the start.  More than anything else, this living in a home which is not a home is responsible for the unrest which exists among the working classes – among the younger sections – to-day.  A young husband, a good worker and quite respectable and intelligent, but one who is forced to live in rooms, told us the other day that he does not think his prospect of getting home will improve “until there’s

A Big Smash

in this country.”  It may be hard to see how that would help him, but it is easy to understand how that idea has gradually got into his mind.

  A potent reason for the strained feeling which undoubtedly exists between the younger married people and the older families is the wicked exploitation which this sub-letting system allows.  Many householders are charging their subtenants more than the actual rent of the house.  In Higham Ferrers the Council – to its credit – does not allow its tenants to charge more than half the rent to subtenants, and the Rushden Council does not allow its tenants to sublet at all, but in private houses in the district there are bad cases of exploitation.  Fifteen shillings for two unfurnished rooms and a kitchen is a typical case.

  Apart from Birmingham’s venture, there is one at Derby which ought to commend itself to authorities in this district.  Some people have nothing but condemnation for houses made of anything but brick and stone, and steel houses have often been referred to as “tin cans.”  Derby examined both steel and concrete houses and was not satisfied, but the Corporation there came across a scheme by which they could build cast-iron houses at the rate of one a day.  And they found on experiment and by the experience of other authorities that the cast-iron houses, while not equalling brick houses, could be made decently fit to live in.  They built 250, and after they had been let and the opinions of the tenants had been obtained they decided on another 250, and these are being erected under contract now, at the stipulated rate of one a day.  The cost works out at £425 each.  We are told that the people going into these houses find them clean and dry and properly ventilated, and they are very glad to be able to live in them.

The Rushden Echo, 1^st January, 1926

Housing Progress at Rushden
Official Figures of The Urban Council
Subsidy Certificates

  Mr. W. B. Madin, the Surveyor of the Rushden Urban District Council, sends us a tabled summary of the progress of house-building in the urban district in 1925, showing that 67 new houses were completed during the year and that 45 were in course of erection at the end of the year.

  Plans were approved for 80 houses, of which 79 were subsidy houses, and of these 46 were plans for Council houses, the rest being for private ownership.  Of the 67 actually completed, 23 were Council houses and 42 for private ownership, making 65 subsidy houses, while the other two were ordinary private houses.  Of the 45 houses under erection at the end of the year, 35 were Council houses and nine for private ownership, making 44 subsidy houses, and the remaining house is an ordinary private house, unsubsidised.

  Subsidies are not paid, of course, until the houses are completed.  For 32 houses 28 subsidy certificates were issued during the year.  Of these 21 were completed and nine were in course of erection at the end of the year.

  An important event in this direction is 1925 was the passing of plans for a new street 203 yards long – Prospect-avenue, off Higham-road.