This 1884 article on the need for housing reform in the British countryside explained why poor labouring people were fleeing from the countryside to reside in slums in the cities and towns. And the writer suggested some ways "the government" could take action to address their needs. All of it is evocative of the present governments' inaction on so many fronts.
[I have added content in square brackets.]
"... Country folk are worse off than townsfolk [because they often have no access to good water (taking water from puddles) or have poor access to good water (only at certain times of the day for example].
Also often it is difficult to get good milk.
.. The greatest happiness of the greatest number may be purchased at a very great cost indeed to the lesser number." [Sometimes the arithmetic is inverted with the majority suffering for the happiness of the few – the 1 percent, or the 10 percent, as the old saying had it.]
The article then spoke of little Czars dominating the local scene in small centres. [It seems Edmonton today is prone to this type of power.-mongering, to cliques that dominate and overwhelm the run-of-the-mill members. Those eager to grab up any little lumps of power sitting around engage in whisper campaigns against "troublemakers", those who stand up for rules and rights, for personal freedom and democratic operation of organizations.]
"The small owners of cottage property in the villages are often very powerful people in their way - they keep the village shop, they own a small public house [the pub], they are leading personages at the chapel, they are a little "before the world," are busy, active and unscrupulous. They walk with a stick, as we say in Arkady "they haven't a need to work, same as a poor man." They make themselves feared and their neighbours know it, and prefer to wink at much that they would gladly see mended, but who is to bell the cat? .. When the day comes, when, as I hope it may, when a righteous Nemesis overtakes the firm of Grasper and Co., the blow will have to be dealt by someone who has no personal connection with the neighbourhood.
I for one have no objection to "the Government" doing this, the dirty work of putting down abuses and saying "this thing must stop." But as I have said before, this would be but the beginning, and when you had made this necessary beginning, the problem of how to provide better dwellings for our peasantry would still remain to be solved.
...
Most land was locked up by private owners, but there is one land base that could be built on to provide housing for country labourers, the author wrote.
"There is scarcely a parish in Norfolk that has not some reserve lands that are given or bequeathed in former times to the inhabitants or the poorer portion of them, and the rents of which are set apart for providing the villagers with fuel, clothing bread or money doles. These are not the commons or waste lands. They are town lands held by trustees for the use and benefit of the parishioners, and the income derived from them is in some instances very large.
In one place, of the rents collected one-third of the income is applied for the relief of poor widows and apprenticing children.
At another place, the rent of the town land gives every married couple five shillings and every child 18 pence, and over and above this and a great deal more, there is a special "widows' gown land", the rent of which is applied for the benefit of the parish widows who are furnished annually with one or more gowns.
These lands as a rule are very conveniently situated, and if they were utilized and labourer's dwellings erected upon them, the value of the lands would be largely enhanced and the beneficiaries of the charity be no sufferers. .. Here and there money might be borrowed upon the security of the town lands, the debt incurred being extinguished by annual instalments.
The author said that if the Government, the charity commissioners, the powers-that-be, each controlled by the wealthy, did build proper housing for labourers, then
"If we can bring labourers to believe that there need be no cruel war between class and class, that the rich are not the enemies of the poor, that they do not want to grind them down, nor make merchandise of them body and soul, but that they do want to help them, raise them and befriend them, if we can draw the labourer into close closer and more personal relations with a landlord, who shall be other than the agent of an absentee proprietor or some petty huckster living for small gains, or even the farmer doing his utmost to get all he can out of his hired help and to lighter their toil, surely we shall have done something in our generation and sown the seed of promise, leaving a harvest of good things to come for others to garner."
(From Augustus Jessopp, "Peasant Homes in Arkady," The Nineteenth Century, Volume 15 (Jan.-June 1884))
However, if the powers-that-be do not build those homes, then what can they expect?
Here I am in the position of Marx when he wrote the Communist Manifesto - he saw only revolution and class warfare in the future due to the behaviour of the owning class. And for all we know, if the owning class had carried on as it had been carrying on, a proletarian revolution may have engulfed Britain. However they didn't. They reformed. Trade unions were hard fought for and successfully established. Eventually welfare state programs were established.
There is still much of a class system in Britain compared to Canada. But not like what Marx had been witnessing.
Along the lines of the town lands discussed above, why can't the City of Edmonton retain ownership of the large parking lot at 80th Avenue and 105th Street, build high-rises and rent them out at lower than market prices (do-able since there would not need to be a profit margin), providing affordable housing, security from the foibles of private landlordism, perhaps allowing families – there is shortage of rental accommodation for parents of children in the area – perhaps ensuring a mixture of young and old, families and singles.
The City could do this while at the same time perhaps diverting the rents to social programs?
Or it could establish a charity to do so or a housing co-operative.
Instead it seems willing to sell it off to a private owner for a one-time payment (plus property taxes unless they are forgiven as part of the deal), depriving future citizens of the benefits that could accrue through city (or social) ownership.
Any future value added to that land – (bound to happen as amenities build around them - unless bars take over and the neighbourhood deteriorates into party central) – will be reaped by the private owner instead of by the city. With rising local conditions, rent could still increase but still could be less than under the private market.
And the city could reap the benefit in the long turn, when the construction costs are paid off, the rent, even adjusted as it was, would be like clear profit, and flowing into city coffers to do good work.
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