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32
HOUSING
At the end of 1950 the Council had a total of 652 permanent houses and
flats, a total of 586 temporary houses of various types, and controlled a
further 1,450 properties under requisition. The grand total of these
properties represents about 17% of all the dwellings in the Borough.
During the year 138 permanent flats were completed for the Council.
Since the end of the Second World War there have been over 12,000
applications for housing in Deptford, 900 being made during 1950. At
the end of the year there were 3,500 “live” applications on the waiting
list.
It is not easy to obtain a realistic picture of the housing need. An
application refers of course to a family and the figures imply that well
over 15% of the whole population is in need of re-housing. In addition a
large number of single persons and married couples without children
have made no application because they realise that they have no reasonable
chance of obtaining the tenancy of a council controlled house. It is not
known how many people have applied to the private house agents but the
number must be very large and many names are probably on the Council
list and several private lists.
It is known that throughout the country the number of families has
increased by 2 million since the war and that only 1£ million houses have
been built in the same period but from general observation it seems that
the tragic shortage of houses is not quite so acute as it appeared some years
ago in spite of the very large number in real need in this area.
During 1950 the cost of building maintained an upward trend with the
consequent necessity for higher rents. It would seem that, in the future,
Council houses will only be available for persons within the moderate or
higher income groups and that the lower paid section of the community
will have to fall back on the older sub-standard properties in private
ownership.
Although 1950 was another year of austerity with its accompanying
shortages and controls it was found somewhat less difficult to ensure that
sanitary defects were remedied. Property owners, as a whole, have been
co-operative in maintaining reasonable housing standards, the exceptions
being perhaps more noticeable because of the comparatively small
number. The improvements effected during 1950 were more numerous
than in any other post-war year but still somewhat below the pre-war
figures. During the year 9,950 improvements were made to 2,657 houses
as compared with 11,425 improvements to 2,585 houses in 1938. In general
owners are less willing to spend money on internal decorations, because of
the marked increase in labour costs and in recent cases the Magistrates
have excluded decorative work from Nuisance Orders, leaving only
structural repairs.
In the maintenance of existing houses the following is a summary of
the work done during 1950.