Call for new, better housing in Newport, from your Argus 100 years ago

HOUSING AT NEWPORT

TONIGHT a Local Government Board inquiry will be held at Newport with reference to the acquisition of land for housing schemes. It is a necessary preliminary to the great work of reform to which the Corporations have undertaken to make their contribution. We do not propose to deal with the specific subject of the inquiry, but this is an appropriate time to comment upon the urgent need for a new spirit with reference to housing at Newport. There has been in recent years an improvement in regard to middle-class houses; now we want an improvement in working-class housing. The people ask that those who toil for low wages - craftsmen, artisans, labourers, clerks, shopmen - should have the chance to live in houses which combine comfort, convenience and beauty. They ask for areas laid out on garden city lines, instead of long rows of ugly boxes of bricks and mortar - for houses semi-detached or combined in picturesque blocks of three or four, for every house a garden, with variety of architecture instead of the deadly uniformity which marks so many areas.

The first necessity for every housing scheme is a fit site. The undeveloped districts around Newport and the townships of Monmouthshire about with sites of great natural beauty. If they are properly utilised Monmouthshire can be made a county of charming townships where beauty and convenience will minister to health of body and mind. But if the development is to proceed upon right lines, with a view to present needs and future developments, there must be town planning on broad lines, and every development must be directed and controlled by the civic authorities, so that the advance of to-day may not be the barrier of to-morrow. We gave only to look around the older Monmouthshire townships (including Newport) to see how handicapped the people of to-day are because there was no controlling authority in the early part of last century. Our ancestors did not foresee the great developments which would follow the industrial revolution; the humble folk of those times had no control of civic policy; and there was no public sentiment in favour of better things. During the past century there has been hard thinking and eloquent propaganda. To-day there is an instructed public opinion upon town planning and housing. Perhaps half the people still are ignorant or indifferent; but there is a body of opinion in favour of housing reform, and the active elements in the nation (not of one class or party only, but of all) are convinced that the provision of hosing is a national duty - that, while the cooperation of individual enterprise is welcome and necessary, it cannot be left to estate owners, private capitalists, or speculative builders, but must be undertaken with the State's financial assistance as part of the municipality's duty.

There are not enough houses at Newport for the people to live in comfort and decency, therefore many more houses must be built merely to accommodate the present population. That is the first point to be considered in connection with the inquiry to-day. We need houses, we must have sites, and the sites suggested will enable the town to build model houses on model lines. There is immediate gain from every properly conceived and efficiently completed housing scheme - it means the provision of decent, comfortable, and beautiful; homes for a number of families, and thought the moral influence is not inevitable, men and women in the main tend to live up to their surroundings. But there are indirect benefits from such schemes. They are an example and a stimulus - especially to the home-makers - the women. What working women in Newport with eyes to see and a heart to feel will be content to live in one of the mean streets of Newport - in one of those old, ugly, dingy, ricketty houses, with no convenience, no outlook- when for an equal rent, or very little more, other women's husbands can get pretty modern cottages in a garden suburb? We want a real housing scheme at Newport to stir in the hearts of the women that divine discontent - that revolt against unnecessary hardship and unloveliness - which is the beginning of reform. We want our housing scheme - our new houses. And when we have them we want to see the women of Newport refusing to occupy the hovels for which their husbands now pay high rents - insisting upon moving out into newer and healthier surroundings - so that houses which are only prevented from becoming uninhabitable slums through the excessive toil of overworked housewives may be left to their fate, and a new public sentiment may compel the municipality to sweep them away and make a garden city in our very midst where now are huddled mean houses in mean streets.