War Workers Housed in Government Trailers
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A Sensible Scheme, Offering Home Amenities, Which Solves the Problem of Housing Large Numbers of American Workers Employed on War Tasks at New Plants
HOUSE trailers; or caravans, have been adopted on rather a large scale by the United .States Government to help speed production of war equipment. Thousands of the little mobile houses were bought last year by the Farm Security Administration to provide emergency housing for the families of new employees in expanded factories and new plants concerned with making aircraft, aircraft engines, ships, shells and explosives. Moreover, plans were made for buying 12,000 more in June of this year. Probably this figu're has been revised by a high-percentage increase since the last week in February, when the President issued an executive order creating the National Housing Agency. All war-workelhousing that is provided out of Government monies is now the responsibility of the Federal Public Housing Authority, which is one of three divisions of the National Housing Agency. As a matter of military policy, the F.P.H.A. is not making public any figures on the number of trailers purchased, to be bought, or already provided at specific locations.
However, included in the emergency housing programme is the provision of commercially produced house trailers to furnish immediate shelter, pending the erection of demountable temporary houses and durable permanent houses in the vicinity of war plants, where acute 'housing shortages have been created by the influx of thousands of employees from other localities.
Many huge new factories have been constructed in areas remote from cities and public transportation facilities. Workers in such plants would normally drive to their jobs daily in their own cars, from distances up to 30 miles or more. However, the critical scarcity of metals, the cessation of car manufacture, the stoppage of rubber imports, and the shortage of petrol in Atlantic seaboard States are interfering with this form of individual transport and making more urgent the need for housing within, walking or cycling distance of the factories. Where immediate " stop-gap "
housing is required, the Federal Public Housing Authority acquires the use of a tract of land, lays out strests, installs water and gas mains, a sewage system and electric lighting, and sets up 25 -to 100 or more house ° trailers in multiples of 25, 'each connected with the gas and electric supply systems. It also provides garbage stations and erects central sanitary units containing spray baths, toilets and laundry facilities for communal use.
The trailers are of two kinds. Thera is a conventional type 8 ft. wide and 22 ft, long having accommodation for four persons, and an expansible type that has folding sides which, can be opened out to. provide living room for six persons, with bedrooms on each side of the liv,ing quarters. These trailers are jacka. up from the ground and the wheels, with the precious tyres, ate removed for use in delivering other trailers.
Both types are fully equipped with modern facilities forhousekeeping, including a gas stove, a water tank, a sink, cupboards, a folding table, upholstered seats and a studio couch .(that opens out into a double bed), a clothes press and numerous drawers.
Workers may either rent or buy one of these modern little homes. Rental for the regular smaller size is $6 to $7 per week, equivalent, at the present official rate of exchange to £1 10s. to £1 15s. The purchase price of the conventional model is $945 (£236 5s.), and of the larger expansible type $1,600 (£400). A condition of purchase is that the buyer signs an agreement to sell his trailer to another war worker if he moves from the community.
Predictions are freely made by architects and others that mobile and demountable houses of various types will become an increasing and established feature of American domestic economy. The reason is„to be found in the shifting of work opportunities, which has been greatly accentuated by the war-production effort, although it was definitely growing in indilstry and agriculture for more than ,a decade before the .war.