Page:Lectures on Housing.djvu/67

to afford the price of decent housing is not susceptible of this simple remedy. It arises, at least in part, from the fact that the ill-housed workman's income, however well it may be expended, is insufficient to give command over the various sorts of minima which we deem it proper he should attain. This is the dominant difficulty with which housing reformers are faced. It is not—let me emphasise the point—specially or peculiarly a housing difficulty. Just as many persons cannot afford, without falling short of what is required elsewhere, to purchase a reasonable minimum of housing accommodation, so also they cannot afford to purchase a reasonable minimum of food or of education or of medical attendance. The failure with which we are confronted is the general fact of poverty, whereof inadequate housing is merely a manifestation. Furthermore, that general fact, it is perhaps well at the present time to observe, would still remain, even though Parliament were to set up and enforce a national minimum wage. I shall not